TKe GOSPEL of a 

: V ;;vY\W PASTOR 



LELEN 




Class. 
Book.. 



It) <b 



Copyright N?. 



» 2. 'iL 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE GOSPEL OF A 
COUNTRY PASTOR 

Sketches and Sermons 



BY THE 

REV. J. M. LELEN 

Author of "Towards the Altar," "The Duty of Happiness," 
"The Gospel of Pain," etc. 



"The new need is the old Gospel." 



B. HERDER BOOK CO. 

17 South Broadway, St. Louis, Mo. 

AND 

68 Great Russell St. London, W. C. 
1922 






NIHIL OBSTAT 
Sti Ludovici, die 22. Martii, 1922. 

F. G. Holweck, 



Censor Librorum 



IMPRIMATUR 
Sti Ludovici, die 22. Martii, 1922. 

*i*Ioannes J. Glennon, 
Archiepiscopus 

Sti, Ludovici 



Copyright, 1922, 

by 

B. Herder Book Co. 



All rights reserved 
Printed in U. S. A. 



M -5 1922 

©CI.A677009 



To 

THE VERY REV. JOS. A. FLYNN, 

Vicar General of the Covington Diocese, 
THESE PAGES ARE HUMBLY INSCRIBED 



CONTENTS 

OHAPTEB PAGE 

Foreword vii 

'Introduction xiii 

I In the Stable i 

II The Shepherds 15 

III In the Village of Nazareth 25 

IV The Lamb of God . . . . 39 

V A Country Wedding 50 

VI On Hills and Mountains 61 

/II Birds of the Air and Lilies of the Field jz 

VIII In the Wilderness 83 

IX Doves and Serpents 90 

X Trees 99 

XI About Animals .111 

XII A Deserter 128 

XIII Jesus, The Good Shepherd 142 

XIV Our Lord with His Harvesters .... 161 



FOREWORD 

"Back to Christ !" 

"Back to the farm I" 

I was indulging in a day dream with those two 
momentous mottoes as a somewhat shadowy subject 
when one of my oldest parishioners handed me the 
following sermon on the soil : 

"I was born in the country. God's earth is to me 
a part and parcel of life. I live to dig. By digging 
I learn to think ; I unearth strange sleeping silences ; 
powers of thought fresh from the soil come forth to 
see God's light and sky. Thoughts, like creatures, 
prone to rest all day, are made to move when I dig. 

"I like to sow. By sowing I learn to trust; God's 
promises can never be forgotten when with Him I 
make things grow. He plants His word as I sow 
the seed; out of my life He bringeth fruit; weak 
though my will which makes me believe and pray, 
and trust and serve. 

"I like to reap. By reaping I bring Joy ; I gather 
God's promises in my hand, and my heart goes out 
to Him for His goodness and mercies to all man- 
kind. He makes His Word fall in due season; 
golden grain and whitened staple tell of His wealth 
and purity. I like to live because to me it hath 

been given to dig and sow and reap. 

vii 



via FOREWORD 

"My closing days on earth shall be in the country ; 
digging, sowing, and reaping; then at the close to 
know that friendly earth is receiving me back and 
that upon my resting-place God's sun and rain shall 
ever fall — this is, indeed, to make of that silence a 
sweet communion with all I have known and loved. 
In the meanwhile 

"Teach me, my God and King, 
In all things Thee to see : 
And what I do in anything 
To do it as for Thee. 

"A servant with this clause, 
Makes drudgery divine: 
Who tills the soil, as for Thy laws 
Makes that, and the action, fine." 

I read and read again this homely homily, and 
resolved to expatiate a little on it. This booklet 
which I hope will be followed by several others, is 
the result of my decision. I lovingly dedicate it to 
my faithful farmers of Falmouth with the hope 
that it may help them to cling to Christ and the 
farm. 

If city people find that my writing, like the afore- 
said sermon, is decidedly plain and common-place, I 
will readily admit that so it is, just as are the making 
of a fire in the morning, the cooking of food, the 
baking of bread, the peeling of potatoes, the mending 



FOREWORD ix 

of clothes, the milking of cows and many other 
very useful labors usually done about the farm. 

Take care of truth, and beauty will take care of 
itself : this has ever been my method and I am now 
too old to change it. In the hands of a priest the 
height of art is not to conceal art, but to ignore it. 
I write to be understood and thereby to do good: 
I care not whether the reader is pleased or not with 
my words. 

"When a man is strong and in good spirits/ ' says 
Liddon, "he likes to toy with style and speculations ; 
but when he is sick, and suffering, and has another 
state of existence looming, however indistinctly, be- 
fore him, he desires truth; — a truth, too, which 
dares to assert itself as truth, which knows its 
responsibilities, its frontiers, its premises and its 
consequences, its foes and its supporters. To talk 
at the bedside of a dying man as if you were doubt- 
ful about your words, or afraid of offending literary 
susceptibilities, would be the acme of ridicule. 
Religion may have — it has — a literary side; but 
speaking broadly, literature is one thing, and religion 
is another and an infinitely higher and more sacred 
thing than literature. It is because our Lord's 
words go straight to the heart and soul of man that 
He shows Himself to be the Master of the absolute 
Religion; and that he gives us a warrant that what 
He says will not pass away." 

All must admit that to give a new edge to truths 



x FOREWORD 

blunted by use, it is not needful that they should 
be clothed in language either gorgeous or elegant; 
but only that their expression should be such as we 
are not accustomed to ; such as to make us stop and 
listen. Since, then, each individual has his own 
individual language and accentuation, it is always 
helpful to hear from others truths which, formulated 
in our own way, pass through our ears without 
friction and therefore escape our attention. For 
this reason it does not seem altogether presumptuous 
or unreasonable to flood the market with religious 
books, provided the author can claim personality of 
manner and disclaim all pretence at novelty in point 
of matter. A new gospel is not worth listening to; 
while to say the old things in the old words is tire- 
some. 

In his latest book, The Holy Earth, L. H. Bailey, 
the Nestor of rural writers, has just told us that 
"a man cannot be a good farmer unless he is a 
religious man." That this sentence is true no one 
can deny, for a farmer's life is one of sacrifice and 
uncertainty; his labor lasts practically all day; few 
are his diversions and many are the risks he runs; 
more than any other man he depends upon the good 
pleasure of God, who sends rain and drought, sun- 
shine and storm, success and failure. And if a 
farmer is not in the habit of looking heavenwards, 
the burden of the day becomes almost unbearable 
at times on his shoulders. 



FOREWORD xi 

Farmers need God in the days of disaster and 
poverty, that they may be enabled to carry on their 
work and never be discouraged; they need Him also 
in the days of prosperity and rich crops, that they 
may make good use of His gifts for themselves and 
for humanity. 

May this handbook of spiritual agriculture lead 
us all to Him, the Friend of the Farmers and Master 
of the Harvests! 



INTRODUCTION 

Before we study the Words and Works of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, it will be good for us to glance 
for one moment over the land where He lived and 
loved, — 

"those holy fields 
Over whose acres walked those blessed feet 
Which, nineteen hundred years ago, were nailed 
For our advantage on the bitter Cross." 

Indeed it were useful for us to place the geography 
of the land in living relation to its Sacred History. 
For, as Ritter says, "The geography of Palestine, as 
we find it to-day, is the strongest testimony of the 
truth of that history which purports to emanate 
thence. The natural scenery of Palestine speaks in 
but one voice in favor of the Bible; every word of 
the sacred narrative receives its best interpretation 
by being studied in connection with the place where 
it was recorded. No one can trace without joy and 
wonder the verification which geography pays to the 
history of the Holy Land. So strong is the argu- 
ment drawn thence, that the most subtle dialectician 
is baffled by it and is entrapped in the net which 

xii 



"the fifth gospel" xi " 

!iis own sophistry has spun." We could call Pales- 
tine "the fifth Gospel." 

That land, that Holy Land, is not, however, pro- 
portioned in size or physical characteristics to its 
moral or historical position *as the theatre of the most 
portentous events in the world's history. The land 
that contains the birthplace of our Lord and the 
cradle of divine revelations is only a strip of country 
about the size of our State of Massachusetts — about 
the fourth part of the size of Ireland — exactly 
8,500 square miles in area. From the city of Dan, 
on the north limit, to Bersabee on the south, is a 
distance of only 139 miles; and the breadth averages 
barely 40. 

When it is remembered that America was un- 
known until 1492, the position of Palestine on the 
map of the ancient world was remarkable. It 
seemed the very centre of the earth, and this position 
accounts for the long prevailing belief that Jerusalem 
was the precise central point. 

The boundaries of this country were the Med- 
iterranean sea in the west; the Lebanon mountains 
on the north ; on the east, the elevated plateau of the 
Syrian steppe that looked towards the great empires 
of Assyria and Babylonia; on the south, the 
mountainous desert of Arabia that shuts it in from 
Egypt. Truly it was an isolated country, "sep- 
arated from among the people of the earth." It 
has a river, the Jordan, which flows from the foot 



xiv EAST OF THE JORDAN 

of Mt. Hermon, the highest peak of the Lebanon, 
and runs in a crooked line from the north to the 
south, connecting along its way the lake of Galilee 
with the Dead Sea, and dividing the whole country 
into two parts, the region west of the Jordan and the 
region east of it 

The region east of the Jordan extends from the 
shore of the Dead Sea to Mt. Hermon, and includes 
Perea, Decapolis, Trachonitis, and Iturea; its 
population was mainly pagan. Seldom did our Lord 
visit this part of the country; it is, however, in its 
northern side, near Cesarea Philippi, that He asked 
of His first followers that momentous question 
which for nearly nineteen centuries has riveted the 
eye of thinking and adoring Christendom : "Whom 
say ye that I am?" It is there that St. Peter 
answered Him. "Thou art the Christ, the Son of 
the living God." It is there that Jesus said to St. 
Peter: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will 
build my Church." There, also our Lord per- 
formed several miracles and preached the doctrine 
of the heavenly Kingdom. 

The region west of the Jordan stretched from the 
north to the south in the following order: Galilee, 
Samaria, Judea. 

The most beautiful part of Galilee was near the 
lake of Gennesareth or sea of Tiberias. The lake, a 
pear-shaped sheet of water is fourteen miles long 
and six broad in its widest part. "In our Lord's 



GALILEE xv 

time," a traveller tells us, "it was a scene of wonder- 
ful beauty. Its deep blue waters were crossed and 
recrossed by boats of many shapes and sizes. There 
were heavily laden barges bearing the costly mer- 
chandise of the East to the custom-house on the 
shore; there were pleasure-skiffs darting here 
and there with gay parties bound for one or 
other of the handsome Roman villas by the lakeside ; 
and there were fishing smacks in hundreds, some 
with nets lowered for a draught, others bringing 
home the fruits of the night's haul. The white 
beach showed boats being unladen, children looking 
on as the silvery load was landed and sorted, men 
and boys mending their nets on the strand or stretch- 
ing them out to dry. Dotted all about were the 
cottages of the fishermen, and, coming down almost 
to the water's edge, glowed rich, waving cornfields 
and flowers of every hue. In the Jordan valley, 
where, sheltered from the winds, the vegetation was 
tropical, the sugar-cane flourished and palm trees 
with their feathery foliage. Higher up grew figs, 
almonds, olives. Higher still, walnut, oak, apple 
trees, each of these needing its own kind of soil and 
temperature, yet all at home here." Here were the 
cities whose names are so familiar to Christian ears 
— Tiberias, Magdala, Bethsaida, Capharnaum, Cana, 
Nazareth, Corozain. 

To the south of Galilee was the province of Sa- 
maria. Josephus tells us that that land was of the 



xvi JUDEA 

same character as Judea. Its inhabitants were a 
mixed race, partly Jews, partly Gentiles. Three 
times did Jesus visit Samaria. 

Judea was the southernmost division of Palestine. 
Bleak and bare were the fields and hills of this 
region, but here is Bethlehem and here is Jerusalem, 
and here is Emmaus and here is Jericho. With 
Galilea hallowed for ever is this land to Christians, 
the land where Jesus dwelt among men. 

This geographical sketch is sufficient for the pre- 
sent. In the course of our work, now and then, we 
will pen-picture the places where Jesus lived and 
loved and died. 



CHAPTER I 

IN THE STABLE 



On that wintry night of the twenty-fourth of 
December, Mary and Joseph neared Bethlehem. 
The way had been long and weary — a four days' 
journey, whatever route had been taken frofri Naz- 
areth. A sense of rest and peace must have crept 
over them when at last they reached the fields that 
surrounded the ancient "House of Bread," as "their 
own city" was oalled. Winter though it was, 
people of that country tell us that the green and 
silvery foliage of the olive might, even at that 
seasoli, mingle with the pale pink of the almond — 
nature's early waker — and with the darker coloring 
of the opening peach bud. The trip of the two 
wayfarers was in obedience to a decree of the 
Roman Emperor, Caesar Augustus, who had or- 
dered a general census of all his subjects; "the 
whole world shall be enrolled" : such was the im- 
perial audacity of the phrase. In deference, how- 
ever, to Jewish prejudices, this enrolment was not 

carried out in the ordinary Roman manner, at each 

1 



2 YET A FEW HOURS 

person's place ai residence, but, according to He- 
brew custom, at the town to which each family 
originally belonged. 

The lowly carpenter of Nazareth, in Galilee, and 
his young wife, slowly trod their way, remembering 
the extraordinary events of the year and pondering 
over them. It was nine months ago to-day since 
the Angel Gabriel came to Mary, asking her in 
God's name whether she would consent to become 
the mother of the Messiah, and the mystery of In- 
carnation took place at the word of the Virgin. 
Afterwards, it was the visit to St. Elizabeth, herself 
chosen and blessed by the Most High at an age when 
she had no more hope of becoming a mother, and 
Mary pouring forth her Magnificat had told her the 
secret of her vocation. Again, it was the wondrous 
dream of St. Joseph, freed from fear by an angel 
about the virtue of his most pure spouse, and hear- 
ing the great tidings that her unborn Child was of 
the Holy Ghost. 

And so their heart holily moved at the remem- 
brance of those heavenly visions and angelic dis- 
courses they marched* with confidence towards the 
joys set in store for them. He was coming at last 
"the Desired of all nations," the Messiah promised 
by God and predicted by the prophets. Yet a few 
hours and Jesus will be in the world. For the full- 
ness of times has arrived, and the sun going down on 



"and thou bethlehem" 3 

that evening under the horizon has saluted the night 
when the Christ is to be born. 

Serene and tender, a hymn of thanksgiving and 
praise ascended from the heart to the lips of Mary, 
while Joseph, witnessing so much faith and humility, 
could only thank Divine Providence and consider 
himself unworthy of being so closely associated in 
the salvation of the world. 

If they had not been folk full of faith, the poor 
workingman and his sweet companion surely would 
have found reasons to complain. Why such a long 
and painful trip when the Child was to come ? Yon- 
der in Nazareth, modest as was their home, it was a 
home after all, a home with kind neighbors whose 
friendly hands would have tended the young mother 
at the moment of her utmost need — for women are 
ever merciful to each other, in this one respect at 
least — but here they were strangers in a strange 
place. But they knew the prophecy of Michaeas. 
A thousand years ago the seer had announced the 
glory which Jesus through His Birth would shed on 
Bethlehem: "And thou Bethlehem, the land of Juda, 
art not the least among the princes of Juda: for 
out of thee shall come the Leader that shall rule my 
people Israel/ ' They understood, therefore, the 
import of the strange circumstances which called 
them away from Nazareth a few days before the 
greatest hour. They knew it was one of those di- 



"there was no room" 



yine incidents in which the great Will rides over 
little human wills. 

Mary was very tired : it is at least seventy miles 
from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and think of it as Dec- 
ember, too, when the weather is chilly and the roads 
are in bad condition. I spoke of silver leaves of 
olives along the road, but it is like little steel swords 
in the wet light that they glance towards the holy 
Virgin. But the joy of her soul lessened her fa- 
tigue. Every step of hers, she knew it, made her 
ever nearer the spot where she would press upon her 
heart that Son so fervently desired — the God-Child 
who was to redeem sinful humanity. 

II 

As soon as they reached the end of their journey 
Joseph went to the inn of the village to find a shelter 
for the night. But, owing to the great number of 
newcomers, "there was no room for them." 

Did they try to find another house? I have al- 
ways been inclined to think that they rather received 
in their soul a grace of light in which they saw the 
plans of God concerning the Nativity of His Christ. 

Christ is the Light, the Life and the Weal of the 
world, the Gift of God to the universe, the Word 
which will say : "Come to Me all ye that suffer and 
are heavy laden," it behooved that His birth should 
take place in the poorest possible manner. Coming 



THE MIDNIGHT MYSTERY [5 

down from heaven to bring us the riches of heaven, 
He had resolved to live and die in such complete 
poverty that He could say : "The foxes have holes 
and the birds of the air, nests ; but the Son of Man 
hath not where to lay His head." This abjection 
was to end only when bare He would die on the bare 
Cross ; but it had to be seen at His very birth. Beth- 
lehem had to resemble Calvary to form with it but 
one mystery. 

Mary and Joseph saw those lights from above. 
Wherefore, without delay, we think that, led by 
them, rather than by sheer necessity, they went to 
where God had decided that the Divine Child should 
be born. 

In the heart of a rock, in the outskirts of Bethle- 
hem there were many natural caves as old as the 
earth. In one of them Mary and Joseph at last 
found a place worthy of the Forsaken One. The 
first prayer that Mary said there remains the secret 
of God. 

That cave or grotto was at the same time a stable 
for cattle : therein were a manger, an ox and an ass. 
Isaias had said : 'The ox knoweth his owner and the 
ass his master's crib: but Israel hath not known 
Me." 

And in that cave, at midnight, nine months after 
having conceived Him in Nazareth, the Immaculate 
Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus, the Word made 
flesh. Jesus went forth from His Virgin Mother 



"given not lent" 



as the light from the sun, as a perfume from a 
flower, as a word from our lips. Words do not 
tear the lips that speak them ; a flower is not altered 
by the perfume it gives forth, the sun loses nothing 
by emitting its rays. A Virgin before child-birth, 
Mary remained a Virgin after child-birth. 

St. Luke calls Jesus "the first born son" of Mary. 
This, as usual in Hebrew, merely means that till then 
she had not had any child. As Jesus is the only 
Son of the Eternal Father, He is also the only Son 
of Mary. But as "the Father of mercies is pleased 
to adopt all men;" as "He predestinates Jesus to be 
the first born among many brethren," Mary is asso- 
ciated to this extended generation of the Word; and 
as the numberless brethren of Jesus shall call 
God their Father, they shall also call Mary their 
Mother. 

This first born of God "Mary wrapped up in 
swaddling clothes and laid in the manger." This is 
all that the Gospel says. And this is enough to feed 
our faith. God has realized His Promise. Out of 
the race of Adam is born the Son of the Woman 
who, through and with the Woman, is to crush the 
head of the serpent, Satan. God has so loved the 
world as to give us His only begotten Son : Unto 
us a Son is given : 

"Given, not lent 
And not withdrawn — once sent. 



THE CRIB LIKE THE CROSS 7 

"Welcome all wonders in one sight ! 

Eternity shut in a span! 
Summer in Winter, Day in Night! 

Heaven in earth and God in Man!" 

We have our Emmanuel, we have our Savior : ours 
in all manners, ours in truth, for this God who gives 
Himself to us is visibly "one of us," the same as we 
are when we are born, "being made to the likeness of 
men and in shape found as a man." He lives ac- 
cording to our ways and begins as we begin. He 
is weak : — He cannot walk, He cannot stand up, He 
cannot speak, He needs His mother's help ; He feels 
cold ; He will have to grow and increase in wisdom 
and grace with God and men. He is the Son of 
Man — subject to all our infirmities — as well as the 
Son of God, — endowed with infinitude. 

Withal, we see already that this new born Child 
is a Victim, the Lamb of God, the Redeemer of man- 
kind. His birth in the lowly condition He has 
chosen is the beginning of an expiatory life, the 
first act of the Sacrifice which God awaits. The 
whole Gospel is here as in its germ : the Crib like the 
Cross cries out the Creed of the Christ. 

Ill 

At times perhaps we feel bewildered when we 
think of this first church— the Stable — where Jesus 



8 THE EMPTINESS OF CHRIST 

vouchsafed to reside and receive the first homage of 
men. But soon we recover and realize that there 
never was anywhere in the universe a temple where 
He was better loved and adored. Mary and Joseph 
were there, the maiden mother and the man of truth. 
And since they were there, what did it matter that 
the walls were bare and dripping and that the ground 
was littered with straw, hay, and provender ? What 
did it matter that the place was dark, cold, and si- 
lent ? Their hearts were warm, their souls luminous 
and poured forth delightful harmonies. 

But a few miles distant on a hill, towered the 
palace- fortress of Herod. The magnificent houses 
of his friends and courtiers crowded around its 
base. Therein could be heard the hired and vo- 
luptuous minstrelsy with which feasts were cele- 
brated, or the shouting of the mercenaries whose 
arms enforced obedience to its despotic lord. But 
the true King of the Jews — the rightful Lord of the 
universe — was not to be found in palace or fortress. 
They who wear soft clothing are in kings' houses. 
The cattle-stable of the lowly caverns was a more 
fitting birthplace for Him who came to reveal that 
the soul of the greatest monarch was no dearer or 
greater in God's sight than the soul of his meanest 
slave ; for Him who from His cross of shame was to 
rule the world. 

Before this emptiness of Christ ungodliness, how- 
ever, has ever violently protested. Such a birth in 



THE BLIND MEN OF THE AGES 9 

such a place cannot be the birth of the Messiah, ex- 
claim the blind men of the ages. And they refuse 
to recognize in the Son of Mary Him after whom 
the people of God longed for so many centuries. 
But we, His faithful followers, kneel down before 
His crib; we adore, we admire, and we understand 
the lessons that flow from the Stable of Bethlehem. 
With Tertullian we believe that the surroundings of 
outward poverty and misery, so far from detracting 
from, seem most congruous to His Divine character. 
Earthly splendor would here seem like tawdry tinsel, 
while the utmost simplicity appears like that clothing 
of the lilies which far surpassed all the glory of 
Solomon's court. 

Fanciful writers of the dawn of Christianity 
speak of many prodigies that happened at the Na- 
tivity. They describe how at the awful moment, 
"the pole of the heaven stood motionless, and the 
birds were still, and there were workmen lying on 
the earth with their hands in a vessel, and those who 
handled it did not handle it, and those who took did 
not lift; and I saw the sheep scattered, and the sheep 
stood, and the shepherd lifted up his hand to strike, 
and his hand remained up; and I looked at the 
stream of the river, and the mouth of the kids were 
down and were not drinking." But of this sudden 
hush and pause of awe-struck nature, of the parhe- 
lions and mysterious splendors which blazed in 
many parts of the world, and of many another won- 



IO IN THE MANGER! 

der which rooted itself in earliest tradition there is 
no trace whatever in the New Testament. The in- 
ventions of man differ wholly from the dealings of 
God. 

The Gospels, always truthful, give the facts with- 
out comment. There is in them nothing of the ex- 
uberance of marvel and mystery. There is no 
more decisive criterion of their absolute credibility 
as simple histories than the marked and violent con- 
trast which they offer to all the spurious gospels of 
the early centuries and all the imaginative legends 
which have clustered around them. 



IV 



Throughout the avenues of the ages, the Gospels 
in hand, then, who would not fain contemplate the 
mother of Jesus near the piteous cradle where her 
Son is resting? Who would not like to see how, 
feeble as she is, she wraps Him up with baby clothes 
— yes, St. Luke hints at it, she has brought them 
with her, those linens and those woolens spun and 
woven by her in Nazareth. — Who would not like to 
see how she lays Him in the Manger? In the Man- 
ger! O, my friends of the farm, how far we are 
from the coziness and the innocent stylishness of 
those mothers of ours who for a long, long time 
dream of the cradle of their first-born child: "It 
would be of solid gold if I could afford it," one day 



CHILDREN 1 1 

I heard a mother say. Nothing seems too dear, 
neither lace nor ribbons, to enshrine the pink little 
baby. I do not blame the solicitude of mothers, but 
still I see and say that Jesus our God took his first 
rest in a little bit of straw, in that very crib where 
a few hours before an ox and an ass had found their 
feed. How such a sight is apt to console the poor 
and guard them from envy; what a light it could 
give to the rich who so often rush into stupid ex- 
penses ! 

Let the example of Mary be of profit to you, O 
Christian women. In that weak Child, who seems 
so powerless, the Blessed Virgin sees and adores her 
God, Him who made the world with its numberless 
riches, Him who through His Providence rules the 
great and the lowly, Him who one day at the end of 
times will judge us all. You also, then, in the wee 
cradle where your sons slumber, in the envelope of 
their so frail bodies, contemplate and admire the 
souls therein nestling, those immortal souls which He 
has hallowed by baptism, which He wills to embel- 
lish with graces and virtues, and which He destines 
— when the struggles and sorrows of this earth are 
over — to the glorious peace and happiness of His 
eternal paradise. 

Before the first Christmas, in the pagan lands of 
antiquity, children were not loved as they are now ; 
no halo of romance and tenderness encircled them; 
too often they were subjected to shameful cruelties 



12 THREE WORDS 

and hard neglect. But He who came to be the 
friend and helper of all, came also to be the protector 
and friend of helpless infancy and innocent child- 
hood. Three utterances came forth from His 
Divine lips about them : "Suffer the little children 
to come unto Me and forbid them not, for of such is 
the Kingdom of God." "Amen, I say to you unless 
you be converted and become as little children you 
shall not enter into the Kingdom of heaven." "He 
that shall receive one such little child in My Name re- 
ceiveth Me. But he that shall scandalize one of 
these little ones that believe in Me, it were better for 
him that a millstone should be hanged around his 
neck and that he should be drowned in the depth of 
the sea. See that you despise not one of these little 
ones for I say to you that their Angels in heaven 
always see the face of My Father who is in heaven." 
And ever since humanity heard and pondered these 
divine sentences, which are the charter of childhood ; 
childhood has become to Christian generations an 
object of respect, admiration, and tenderness. It is 
since then, not before, that lines like these were 
written : 

"When grace is given us ever to behold 

A child some sweet months old, 
Love, laying across our lips his finger, saith, 

Smiling, with bated breath, 
Hush ! for the holiest thing that lives is here 

And heaven's own heart how near! 



IN THE HOSTEL OP OUR HEART 1 3 

How dare we, that may gaze not on the sun 

Gaze on this verier one? 
Heart, hold thy peace ; eyes, be cast down for shame ; 

Lips, breathe not its name. 
In heaven they know what name to call it : we, 

How should we know ?" 

Verily, childhood has been transfigured by Chris- 
tianity : of heaven, heavenly, now it is : before Christ, 
of earth, earthly, it was. 



v; 



Let the thought of the Stable of Bethlehem be 
sweet to you, O my farmers, too often so uncom- 
fortably housed and poorly fed and paid. Think of 
that December Night when Jesus so pitifully came 
to this world. O, my sons of the soil, what does it 
matter, after all, where you sleep, since you sleep so 
well after the hard toil of the day, and since your 
souls are so well kept in the peace of the Lord. O 
you who have to work in and around the stables, re- 
member that it was a sad one, the Stable where the 
Lamb of God was born; and let a fervent prayer 
arise from your lips to implore and praise our Di- 
vine Savior. 

To all I say that we all have to reserve a choice 
room for Jesus in the hostel of our heart. So often, 
it happens that we do not let Him come in as He 
would fain desire. Pleasures, business, worldly 



14 THE SKY IS RED 

thoughts, social calls take too large a share of our 
life and of our heart which He made so great and 
which we make so small. When He comes to us 
there is no room for Him. Fools that we are! 
The name of Jesus is Happiness-that-passes- 
by, and perhaps He will never return if He has to 
go without being received. 

O poor, divine Christ of the Crib, have mercy on 
us, have mercy on this our native land. O Holy 
Child, bless and safeguard the cradles of our coun- 
try, for we are in sore need of good Christians and 
good Americans. To-night the sky is red, but will 
it be fair to-morrow ? 



CHAPTER II 

THE SHEPHERDS 

In the field and with their flocks abiding, 

They lay on the dewy ground ; 
And glimmering under the starlight 

The sheep lay white around. 
When the Light of the Lord streamed o'er them, 

And lo ! from the heaven above 
An angel leaned from the glory, 

And sang his song of love : 

"To you, in the City of David, 

A Savior is born to-day!" 
And sudden a host of the Heavenly ones 

Flashed forth to join the lay! 
O never hath sweeter message 

Thrilled home to the souls of men, 
And the heavens themselves had never heard 
A gladder choir till then. 

F. W. Farrar. 

Yes, that Night, that holy Night, there were shep- 
herds watching their flocks in the very place conse- 
crated by tradition as that where the Messiah was to 

15 



1 6 GLORIA IN EXCELSIS 

be first revealed. Of a sudden came the long-de- 
layed, unthought-of announcement. Heaven and 
earth seemed to mingle, as suddenly an angel stood 
before their dazzled eyes, while the outstreaming 
glory of the Lord seemed to enwrap them as in a 
mantle of light. 

Surprise, awe, fear, were hushed into calm and 
expectancy, as from the angel they heard, that which 
they saw boded not judgment, but ushered in to 
waiting Israel the great joy of those good tidings 
which he brought: that the long-promised Savior, 
Messiah, Lord, was born in the city of David, and 
that they themselves might go and see and recognize 
Him by the humbleness of the circumstances sur- 
rounding His Nativity. 

But let us read the very account of the Gospel : 
"There were shepherds in the country, dwelling 
out in the fields, and keeping the night-watches over 
their flock. And lo ! an angel of the Lord stood by 
them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about 
them ; and they were sorely afraid. And the angel 
said to them : 'fear not, for behold, I bring you good 
tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people; 
for there is born to you to-day in the city of David 
a Savior who is Christ the Lord. And this is the 
sign to you ; you will find a babe wrapped in swath- 
ing-bands, and lying in a manger/ And suddenly 
there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly 
host praising God, and saying : 



HIS FIRST COURTIERS 1 7 

'Glory to God in the highest 
And on earth peace to men of good will/ " 

Jesus is born: straightway, although it is the dead 
of night, must be invited some faithful folks to 
His Cradle. From the sky that blossoms with their 
celestial forms and faces, angels come to cry it out 
and summon His first courtiers. Who will these 
be ? The rich, the learned, the happy of this world? 
No. As He will call only poor fishermen to be 
His first disciples and the doctors of His Church 
the angels convoke only plain, humble shepherds. 

"In choosing these shepherds of Bethlehem/' says 
Father Breen, "as witnesses of the authenticity of 
His birth, Christ adhered to His original design of 
teaching the world that its valuation of temporal 
goods and honors is wrong. The world's basis of 
showing honor is not founded on the intrinsic good- 
ness of man, but on his possessions or some other 
extrinsic adjunct. Had Christ chosen the learned 
doctors, or the men of power and wealth in His 
nation, it would appear an approbation of the 
world's line of action in such matters. No one 
else would be as much at home in the stable as the 
poor, simple shepherd. It was another act in the 
condescension of Christ, who came down to the 
lowest grade of human life that He might the 
more efficaciously teach men how to live. There is 
a wondrous majesty in the birth at Bethlehem. It 
would be obscured and weakened by the changing 



1 8 THE NEW HOUR 

of one factor. There is no majesty in selfish ease. 
Not in attending to personal comforts, but in re- 
nouncing them, is man great. And so, from His 
birth in the manger to His death-bed on the hard 
wood of the Cross, Christ takes the lead in the re- 
nunciation of selfish interests and comforts. Again, 
had Christ come among men in a higher social 
station, the poor and the unhonored might say: 
'He thinks not of us; every one on earth elbows 
us aside, and even Christ has confirmed by His 
course of action that they who have money 
are the best/ In a word, the equilibrium of 
human life had been disturbed by man's adora- 
tion of Mammon. Christ endeavors to recall 
it to the harmonious order wished by God, by 
honoring poverty in His birth. Hence the virtuous 
poor are the nobility of Christ/' 

Wealthy Magi and Kings will be called later on, 
but they will be ushered in only after our dear 
country peasants. And this the more deeply moves 
us when we think how despised were the poor by 
the pagans. The hour had indeed struck when the 
first were going to be the last. Henceforth those 
who never knew or those who- had forgotten 
it, began to learn that God is in no need of human 
grandeur and that to Him simplicity and candor 
of soul are preferable to the tinsel of riches and the 
flash of titles and dignities. 

Simple and candid they were, these shepherds. 



THEY MADE KNOWN THE WORD 1 9 

It is claimed that they may have been members, 
though poor and humble, of that true Israel which 
included Mary and Joseph, Zacharias and Elizabeth, 
Simeon and Anna — the representatives of the saints 
of their nation in its bright past. They must have 
been looking out, in their simple way, towards the 
invisible and eternal, and seeking that kingdom of 
God for themselves which was one day, as they 
believed, to be revealed to their nation at large. 
Only that mind which has sympathy with external 
nature can receive in their true significance the im- 
pressions God wants to convey, and only the heart 
which has sympathy with spiritual things can 
recognize their full meaning. And such was their 
mind. The stillness over hill and valley, broken 
only by the bleating of the sheep; the unclouded 
brightness of the Syrian sky, with its innumerable 
stars; and the associations of those mountain 
pastures, dear to every Jew as the scenes of David's 
youth, were over and around them. 

But let us return to the beautiful narrative of 
St. Luke : 

"When the angels departed from them into 
heaven, the shepherds said to one another: 'Let us 
go over to Bethlehem, and see the thing that is come 
to pass, which the Lord has shown us/ And they 
came with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and 
the Infant lying in the manger. When they saw it, 
they made known the word which had been spoken 



20 THE FIRST WORSHIPPERS 

to them about this little Child. And all who heard 
marvelled at the things that were told them by the 
shepherds. But Mary kept all these words, ponder- 
ing them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, 
glorifying and praising God for all the things which 
they had heard and seen, as it was told them." 

Without drawing on our imagination we can 
represent to our minds the greetings of the shep- 
herds to the King of glory, who for love of us 
vouchsafed to make Himself so small; we can also 
see the blessings which they received from being, 
with Mary and Joseph, the first worshippers of Jesus. 

Eloquent is the lesson which they give us by their 
prompt belief in the word of the angel and their 
quickness in complying with the call from above. 
Eloquent also is the fact that, when they return to 
their fields, they glorify and praise God, thereby 
teaching us the duty of gratitude. 

"The figures of the Shepherds/ ' says Father 
Faber, "have grown to look so natural to us in our 
thought-pictures of Bethlehem that it almost seems 
now as if they were inseparable from it and in- 
dispensable to the mystery. What a beautiful 
congruity there is between the part they play, and 
their pastoral occupation! The very contrasts are 
congruities. Heaven opens, and reveals itself to 
earth, making itself but one side of the choir to sing 
the office of the Nativity, while earth is to 
be the other; and earth's answer to the open 



THEIR AFTER- YEARS 21 

heavens is the pastoral gentleness of those 
simple-minded watchmen. She sets her Shepherds 
to match the heavenly singers, and counts their 
simplicity her most harmonious response to angel- 
ical intelligence. Truly earth was wise in this 
her deed, and teaches her sons philosophy. It was 
congruous, too, that simplicity should be the first 
worship which the outer world sent into the Stable 
of Bethlehem. For what is the grace of simplicity 
but a permanent childhood of the soul, fixed there 
by a special operation of the Holy Ghost, and there- 
fore a fitting worship for the Holy Child Himself? 
Their infant-like heavenly-mindedness suited His 
infantine condition, as well as it suited the purity 
of the heavenly hosts that were singing in the upper 
air. Beautiful figures! on whom God's light rested 
for a moment and then all was dark again! they 
were not merely shapes of light, golden imaginings, 
ideal forms, that filled in the Divine Artist's myste- 
rious picture. They were living souls, tender yet 
not faultless men, with inequalities in the monotony 
of their human lot that often lowered them in 
temper and in repining to the level of those around 
them. They were not so unlike ourselves, though 
they float in the golden haze of a glorious picture. 
They fell back out of the strong light, without any 
complaint, to their sheep-flocks and their night 
watches. Their after-years were hidden in the 
pathetic obscurity which is common to all blameless 



22 UNDER THE SUN AND THE STARS 

poverty; and they are hidden now in the sea of light 
which lies like a golden veil of mist close round the 
throne of the Incarnate Word." 

II 

O you country people, who at your every step can 
hear God and see Him in the flower of the road, 
in the song of the birds, in the bee-hive's hum, in 
the wheat that stirs with the sap of the spring, in the 
drops of rain and in the rays of the sun, in all those 
harmonies of nature, take care to proclaim like the 
Shepherds His power and His generosity, that He 
may safeguard and bless you ! In the cities, believe 
me, there are too many clamorous jars, and the 
smoke is too dense : eyes cannot see and ears cannot 
(hear; and lips are too often impure with blas- 
phemies. O you, to whom God's Providence speaks 
every day and displays itself everywhere, under the 
sun and the stars, openly and fearlessly learn to 
proclaim how great is the beauty and how merciful 
the goodness of your Creator. Ever make your 
intercourse with His works deepen your faith in His 
Word: 

"The works of God are fair for nought 
Unless our eyes, in seeing, 
See hidden in the thing the thought 
That animates its being. 



THE FOOTPRINTS OF THE CREATOR 2J 

"The outward form is not the whole, 
But every part is moulded 
To image forth an inward soul, 
That dimly is unfolded. 

"The shadow pictured in the lake, 

By every tree that trembles, 
Is cast for more than just the sake 
Of that which it resembles. 

"The dew falls lightly, not alone 
Because the meadows need it ; 
But hath an errand of its own, 
To human souls that heed it. 

"The stars are lighted in the skies 
Not merely for their shining; 
But like the light of loving eyes, 
Have meanings worth divining. 



(< 



The waves that moan along the shore, 
The winds that sigh in blowing, 

Are sent to teach a mystic lore, 
Which men are wise in knowing. 



"The clouds around the mountain peak, 
The rivers in their winding, 
Have secrets which, to all who seek, 
Are precious in the finding. 



24 ALONG THE ROAD 

"Thus nature dwells within our reach; 

But though we stand so near her, 
We still interpret half her speech 
With ears too dull to hear her. 

"Whoever at the coarsest sound 
Still listens for the finest. 
Shall hear the noisy world go round 
To music the divinest. 

"Whoever yearns to see aright, 
Because his heart is tender, 
Shall catch a glimpse of heavenly light 
In every earthly splendor. 

"So since the universe began, 
And till it shall be ended, 
The soul of nature, soul of man, 
And soul of God are blended." 

"The wonders of the visible creation," wrote St. 
Gregory the Great, "are the footprints of our 
Creator Himself; as yet we cannot see Him, but we 
are on the road that leads to this vision, when we 
admire Him in the things that He has made. And 
so we call created things His footprints, because 
they are made by Him, and guide us to Himself." 



CHAPTER III 

IN THE VILLAGE OF NAZARETH 

At Nazareth when the hours seemed long, 
Our Lady would keep in her heart a song, 
As she plied all her tasks in her perfect way ; 
For she knew quite well that the close of day 
Would bring Jesus home her cares to allay 

At evening. 

And so when the great red sun would sink 
Down into the West, and the stars would wink, 
As they peered one by one through the purple sky, 
She would stand at her door and with eager eye 
Expectantly wait as her Jesus drew nigh 

At evening. 

Then quickly across the fields He would come 

Quite wearied with toil and glad to be home: 

And Mother and Son at their humble door 

Would lovingly meet, while the starlight would pour 

A soft reverent light on their cottage-floor, 

At evening. 

Oh, it were hard for mere words to tell 

The joy with which Mary's spirit would swell, 

25 



26 THE LAND OF LOVE 

As she pillowed her head upon Jesus' breast. 
All her cares as He tenderly soothed and caressed 
Would vanish. Yea, truly Mary was blest 

At evening. 

C. A. Burns, S. J. 

"When Herod died, there appeared an angel of 
the Lord in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, 
'Rise, take the Child and His mother and go to the 
land of Israel, for those who sought the Child's 
life are dead/ So he rose, and took the Child and 
His mother and went to the land of Israel; but on 
hearing that Archelaus reigned over Judea in place 
of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there and, 
by a divine injunction in a dream, withdrew to the 
region of Galilee. He went and settled in a town 
called Nazareth, so that what had been said by the 
prophets might be fulfilled: 'He shall be called a 
Nazarene/ And the Child grew and waxed strong, 
full of wisdom; and the grace of God was in Him." 

From Bethlehem to Egypt, and now from Egypt 
to Nazareth, such was the peregrination of Mary 
and Joseph with the Divine Child. 

In the midst of the ruins everywhere heaped up 
in the Holy Land, the village of Nazareth is still 
full of life and inhabitants. Reverently and 
lovingly pilgrims go there; accurately they tell us 
of it. 



geikie's pen-picture 27 

"The highlands which form the central portion 
of Palestine/' says Geikie, "are broken by the wide, 
rich plain of Jezreel, which severs Galilee from the 
rest of the land. This was always the great battle- 
field of Israel. Appropriately, it is shut in as 
between mountain-walls. That along the north of 
the plain is formed by the mountains of Lower 
Galilee, cleft about in the middle by a valley that 
widens, till, after an hour's journey, we stand within 
an enclosure which seems almost one of nature's 
own sanctuaries. As in an amphitheatre, fifteen 
hill tops rise around. That to the west is the 
highest. On its lower slope nestles a little town, 
its narrow streets ranged like terraces. This is 
Nazareth. Climbing this hill, fragrant with 
aromatic plants, and bright with rich-colored 
flowers, a view almost unsurpassed opens before us. 
For the Galilee of the time of Jesus was not only of 
the richest fertility, cultivated to the utmost, and 
thickly covered with towns and villages, but the 
centre of every known industry. Northward the 
eye would sweep over a rich plain; rest here and 
there on white towns, glittering in the sunlight ; then 
quickly travel over hills and glens, till passing be- 
yond the view is bounded by that giant of the far- 
off mountain chain, snow-tipped Hermon. West- 
ward stretched a like scene of beauty and wealth, 
while on the edge of the horizon, lay purple Carmel; 
beyond it a fringe of silver sand, and then the daz- 



28 TRANQUIL, HOMELY BEAUTY 

zling sheen of the Great Sea. In the farthest 
distance, white sails, like wings outspread towards 
the ends of the world; nearer, busy ports, then, 
centres of industry; and close by, travelled roads, all 
bright in the pure Eastern air and rich glow of the 
sun. But if you turned eastwards, the eye would 
soon be arrested by the wooded height of Tabor, 
yet not before attention had been riveted by the 
long, narrow string of caravans, and curiosity 
roused by the motley figures of all nationalities, 
busy binding the East to the West by the line of 
commerce that passed along the route winding 
around Tabor. And when, weary with the gaze, you 
looked once more down on little Nazareth nestling on 
the breast of the mountain, the eye would rest on a 
scene of tranquil, homely beauty. Just outside the 
town, to the north-west, bubbled the spring or well, 
the try sting-spot of townspeople, and welcome rest- 
ing-place of travellers. Beyond it stretched lines of 
houses, each with its flat roof standing out distinctly 
against the clear sky; watered, terraced gardens, 
gnarled wide-spreading fig-trees, graceful, feathery 
palms, scented oranges, silvery olive-trees, thick 
hedges, rich pasture-land, then the bounding hills to 
the south." 

Such was the country of the Child Jesus, and if 
we scan the Gospels we get a glimpse of its people 
and their manners. "Busy labor enlivens the vine- 
yard, or ploughs the field, or digs the garden. In 



"on this little o, the earth." 29 

the towns, building is going on vigorously : the extra 
millstone lies ready beside the mill: the barns are 
filled and new ones about to be built: vineyards 
stretch along the terraced hillsides, and outside 
the towns are seen the white- washed stones of 
sepulchres. On the roads, and beside the hedges, 
the blind and crippled await the gifts of passers 
by: laborers are being hired in the market places, 
and the farm servant wends homewards in the 
evening with his plough: the song and dance of 
lighthearted youth on the village green, are heard 
from a distance: the children play in the open 
places of the towns: and visitors knock at closed 
doors even in the night. The hum of lusty many- 
colored life everywhere rises: the busy crowds 
have no time to think about higher things. One has 
bought a field and must go to see it, another has to 
prove a new yoke of oxen, and a third has some 
other business — a feast, a marriage or a funeral. 
They eat, they drink, they buy, they sell, they plant, 
they build, they marry wives and are given in 
marriage, as full of the world in its ambitions, cares, 
labors and pleasures, as if the little moment of their 
lives were to last forever "on this little O, the earth." 
Among such people and in that country Jesus 
spent by far the largest part of His life on earth. 
It was here that "as the flower of roses in the spring 
of the year and as lily by the waters" He grew up as 
other children grow, only in a childhood of stainless 



30 "they thrust him out" 

and sinless beauty. It is here that He heard the 
voice of God in every sound of nature, in every 
occupation of life, in every interstice of solitary 
thought. It is here that He shared the games of the 
children, saw the springing of the fountains and the 
glory of the mountain flowers in their transitory 
loveliness, heard the hoarse cry in their wind-rocked 
nest of the raven's callow brood, and watched the 
habits of the fox in its secret lair. It is here that 
He drew food for moral illustrations and spiritual 
thought. In fact this was His home for all but 
three years of His earthly life. Indeed Nazareth 
is the village which lent its then ignominious name 
to the scornful title written upon His cross; the 
village from which He did not disdain to draw His 
appellation when He spoke in vision to Saul : "I am 
Jesus of Nazareth whom thou persecutest. ,, Alas! 
it is from here also that "they thrust Him out and 
brought Him to the brow of the hill, wherein the 
city was built, that they might cast Him down head- 
long. ,, It is here that He said: "No prophet is 
accepted in his own country." 

Nor must we lose sight of the fact that it was in 
these silent years that a great part of His task was 
done. They were the years of a sinless childhood, 
a sinless youth, a sinless manhood, — spent in 
humility, toil, obscurity, submission, contentment, 
prayer, to make them an eternal example to our 
race. 



THE HIDDEN YEARS 3 1 

We cannot imitate Him in the work of His 
ministry, nor can we even reproduce in our own 
experience the external circumstances of His life 
during the three crowning years. But the vast 
majority of us are placed by God's own appointment 
amid those quiet duties of a commonplace and un- 
eventful routine which most closely resemble the 
thirty years of His retirement; it was during these 
years that His life is for us the main example of how 
we ought to live. "Take notice here/' says St. Bon- 
aventure, "that His doing nothing wonderful was in 
itself a kind of wonder. For His whole life is a 
mystery ; and as there was power in His actions, so 
was there power in His silence, in His inactivity, 
and in His retirement. The sovereign Master, who 
was to teach all virtues, and to point out the way of 
life, began from His youth up, by sanctifying in 
His own person the practice of the virtuous life He 
came to teach, but in a wondrous, unfathomable, 
and, till then, unheard-of manner.' ' 

II 

"Through the months of the four seasons,'' writes 
Father Faber, "through the days of the week with 
their varying occupations, through the hours of the 
day from the pearly dawn until the starry dusk, 
through the quiet watches of the nights of sleep 
and prayer, we must familiarize ourselves with our 



32 THE SEEMING GROWTH 

Lord's Hidden Years at Nazareth. His real 
growth of Body, perceptible from time to time, 
would seem a worshipful mystery, when we con- 
sider who He was. Here in autumn He is lifting 
weights which in spring He could not have lifted. 
The light is changed in His eye, because the 
maturity of years is deepening it. The tone of 
His voice is graver because the power of years is 
toning it. The voice of the Eternal Word broke, 
like the voices of other boys. His Mother's ways 
come up upon the surface of His bodily gestures 
and surprise us into tears. We cannot watch this 
common growth of His human Body without 
adoring. 

"But the seeming growth of His Soul is yet more 
wonderful. He appears more holy than He was a 
month ago. Grace looks as if it had developed in 
Him. It does not seem merely as if circumstances 
had opened wider fields for His grace, or had con- 
ferred upon them more advantageous positions. 
But it seems as if He grew in grace. The very 
seeming of such a thing is adorable, the more ador- 
able because we know it is but seeming. His grace 
never grew from the first moment of His Concep- 
tion. But greater wisdom gives grace more liberty. 
Does He then seem more holy simply because He 
has grown wiser? But He has not grown wiser. 
This also is but a mysterious semblance; but here 
again the semblance is of itself adorable. Never- 



HE WAS OBEDIENT 33 

theless He makes acquisitions, and this is truly a 
growth, yet in Him hardly a growth. Rather it is 
one of His loving condescensions. He gains no 
new knowledge. He does not grow in science : He 
only becomes master by acquisition of the same 
science of which He was master before in higher 
ways. He knows certain things, such things as 
life's experience is capable of teaching, in two ways, 
instead of knowing them in one way. He has now 
a double knowledge of them, an acquired knowl- 
edge in addition to the infused knowledge He had 
before." 

This is exquisitely well said and grandly worth 
perusing, but let us leave to the theologians the 
arduous care to establish in learned and long theses 
what was the progress of the Divine Child; let us 
rather present Jesus as a Model to all children, 
young and old. 

He was obedient! What a lesson in these three 
words to the pitiful creatures that we are! What a 
curb to our pride so easily in revolt. He who was 
subject to a poor carpenter and a lowly woman, was 
He by whom all things were made, and with- 
out Whom was not made anything that hath been 
made, He who at this hour guides the march of 
the sun and the stars and rules the waves of the 
oceans. 

He was pious! His life, needless to say, was a 
permanent prayer; a blending of His will with the 



34 GOD AND MAN 

will of His Father. It were almost irreverent to 
expatiate on this. 

He was good! Here as everywhere He went 
about doing good, but there was nothing sombre or 
morose around Him. He was the joy of His 
home; His smile was a sunbeam; He helped His 
mother when she worked in the kitchen or in the 
laundry ; He helped St. Joseph in the shop ; He ran 
errands for both ; with both He prayed and played. 
He was the human Being as well as the Divine 
Being. 

God and Man! Here, without ever trying fo 
explain the union of the Divinity with the Humanity 
of Jesus — an explanation which is impossible since 
it involves the comprehending of God — we perhaps 
ought to emphasize the entireness of both. We 
never think of Jesus enough as God, never enough 
as Man; the instinctive habit of our minds being 
always to miss of the Divinity, and the reasoning 
and enforced habit to miss of the Humanity. We 
are afraid to harbor in our hearts, or to utter in the 
hearing of others, any thought of our Lord, as 
hungering, tired, sorrowful, having a human soul, 
a human will, and affected by events of human life 
as a human creature is; and yet one half of the 
efficiency of His atonement, and the whole of the 
efficiency of His examples, depend on His having 
been this to the full. 



FOUND IN THE TEMPLE 35 

But we are in haste to read the episode of His 
hidden life, the only one related by the Gospels : 

"His parents used to journey every year to Jeru- 
salem, at the feast of the Passover. When He was 
twelve years old they went up to Jerusalem accord- 
ing to the custom of the feast; and when they had 
completed the days, as they were returning, the boy 
Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem, and His parents 
knew it not; but supposing Him to be in the car- 
avan, they went a day's journey, and were seeking 
Him among their relatives and acquaintances; and 
not finding Him they returned to Jerusalem, look- 
ing for Him. And after three days they found 
Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors 
and asking them questions. All who heard 
Him were amazed at His understanding and His 
answers. And when they saw Him, they were 
astonished ; and His mother said to Him : Son, why 
hast thou done so to us, see, thy father and I have 
sought Thee sorrowing. And He said to them: 
How is it that you sought Me? did you not know 
that I must be about the things of My Father? 
And they did not understand the word which He 
spoke to them. And He went down with them, and 
came to Nazareth; and He was subject to them. 
And His mother kept all these things in her heart. 
And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age, and in 
grace with God and men." 



36 CATECHISM ! 

No need of comment here. Better for us it is 
to bring this incident into comparison with some 
episodes of our rural life. 

When our farmers' little boys have grown up, one 
day comes when they present themselves, not to the 
doctors of the law, but to the pastor of the parish. 
They are about seven years old, the age when they 
must begin or continue their religious instruction and 
their moral education: the time when they must 
learn their Catechism. 

Catechism ! How many a remembrance is awak- 
ened by this word, and how many pages we could 
transcribe on it ! So many have praised it ! So many 
of our best people have found there, and nowhere 
else, a complete food for their soul ! 

With the sacred formulas of that religious 
manual which they engrave in their memory, chil- 
dren learn what they must believe, what they must 
do, and what they must love. Therein they acquire 
right thoughts about God, right ideas of themselves 
and of their destiny, right ideas of sin and evil, right 
thoughts of the four last things ; right thoughts of 
Jesus and His mother, right thoughts of the faith 
and practice of Christian life. Therein they learn 
the three ideals of life : truth, goodness, and beauty: 
— truth that brings light, goodness that brings 
honesty, beauty that brings happiness: God's truth, 
God's goodness, God's beauty. 

Too lofty, too sublime for children, you say. 



FIRST COMMUNION 37 

No. Speak to them and see for yourself how this 
naturally Christian soul enjoys a special grace from 
God to deal with the things of heaven : 

"Oh! say not, dream not, heavenly notes 

To childish ears are vain, 
That the young mind at random floats 
And cannot reach the strain. 

"Dim or unheard, the words may fall, 

And yet the Heaven-taught mind 
May learn the sacred air, and all 
The harmony unwind." 

Has not the highest of all authorities told us that 
"things that are hidden from the wise and prudent 
are revealed to the little ones"? 

They are soon ready for the Banquet of God, 
these little ones of God. You tell me that they are 
not yet worthy of receiving Jesus; I know, but 
surely Jesus is worthy of being received by them. 
The priest then opens the door of the tabernacle, he 
takes into his hands, he places on their tongue, he 
enshrines in their pure heart the Holy Host of the 
First Communion. And at the same time he utters 
the words that shall re-echo in time and in eternity : 
"The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ preserve thy 
soul unto everlasting life." And in that morning 
when our first communicants have received Jesus 
and have renewed to Him their baptismal vows, 



38 ONLY ONE SEED TIME 

small as they are, their real life begins. Hence- 
forth they have to march in the footsteps of Him 
who now lives in them. According to His example, 
and with His help and your help, O Christian 
parents, may they do their best to progress in 
wisdom and in grace, before God whom they honor 
by their faithfulness, before men whom they edify 
by their virtues. Watch over them, O ye fathers 
and mothers, for the peace of your conscience and 
the joy of your old days are at stake. Lovingly 
and strongly ever watch over them, that you may 
never have to shed tears over their loss. Yours is 
a great responsibility. On the day of the final 
judgment, God, who has entrusted them to you, will 
ask an account of your stewardship. Blessed will 
you be if you are in a position to answer: "Lord, I 
have raised them in thy love." 

There are many harvests in a life time, but there 
is only one seed time. All depends on the begin- 
nings. Look to any budding mischief, before it has 
time to ripen into maturity. Watch your children 
from their babyhood; let the first word they speak 
be the Name of Jesus. Give yourselves the joy to 
be their first catechist. 



CHAPTER IV, 

THE LAMB OF GOD 

In those little villages of French Canada whose 
names sound like a litany of saints, the greatest day 
of the year is the feast of St. John the Baptist. In 
fact, it is the national holiday. But when, on the 
morning of the 24th of June, houses awake em- 
bowered in the midst of roses, and when at twilight 
fires are kindled on the hill-tops and on the lea and 
on the swards, few perhaps are those who remember 
that they re-echo adown the vista of nineteen 
hundred years the word of the angel, proclaiming 
that "many shall rejoice" in honor and in memory 
of the son of Zachary and Elizabeth. Few they are 
who know the wondrous circumstances of his birth : 
the angel Gabriel appearing and standing on the right 
side of the altar of incense, and announcing to the 
priest that a son shall comfort his old age and cover 
his family with unexpected glory ; Zachary stricken 
with dumbness for having been doubtful, but able to 
speak again, nine months later, after the delivery of 
Elizabeth; the astonishment of relatives, neighbors 
and friends, witnesses of these wonders and, saying: 

39 



40 IN CAVES OF WILDERNESS 

"What a one think ye, shall this child be, for the 
hand of the Lord is with him." 

There are wonders at every step in the childhood 
of St. John the Baptist, but not less prodigious is 
his life. As soon as he is of age, he withdraws 
from his family and mankind, to the caves of the 
wilderness stretching away from Hebron, his native 
town, and begins to prepare himself for his sacred 
mission. 

Travellers who have visited that country tell us 
that no words can picture the wild grandeur of the 
desert of Judea. "It is," says Geikie, "a dreary 
waste of rocky valleys; in some parts stern and 
terrible — the rocks cleft and shattered by earth- 
quakes and convulsions, into rifts and gorges some- 
times a thousand feet in depth, though only thirty 
or forty in width; in others, stretching out in bare 
chalk hills full of caves, or in white, flint-bound 
ridges, and winding, muddy wadys, with an 
occasional reservoir, hewn in the hard limestone, to 
supply water in a land destitute of springs. One 
may travel all day, and see no other life than the 
desert partridge, and a chance fox or vulture. Only 
the dry and fleshy plants, which require no water, 
grow on the hills, and in the valleys the most lux- 
uriant vegetation is the white broom bushes, which 
blossom in March. The whole district is, in fact, 
the slope of the midland chalk and limestone 
hills, from their highest point of nearly 3,000 



HIS APPEARANCE 4 1 

feet, near Hebron, to 1,000 at the valley of the 
Dead Sea. The Hebrews fitly call it Jeshimon 
— the appalling horror — for it is not possible to 
conceive a more desolate region. On the north- 
ern side, valleys of great depth, sinking towards 
the Dead Sea, almost preclude travelling except in 
their troughs, and farther south, the country is 
absolutely impassable. Huge perpendicular gorges 
have been hollowed out by the great torrents, rushing 
in winter over the precipices. The only natural site 
for a town, in the whole district, is the opening at 
the foot of the pass of Engaddi, the spring of the 
wild goats, above the shores of the sea, and this is 
reached only by a narrow, serpent-like path, down 
cliffs twelve hundred feet high." 

It is here that is some cave, or in the depth of a 
narrow gorge John took up his abode, to be alone 
with God and his own soul. 

The Gospels supply us with glimpses of the Bap- 
tist's appearance and way of living. His hair hung 
low about him. His only food was the locusts 
which he found on the bare hills, and the wild honey 
which he gathered from the clefts of rock, and his 
only drink a draught of water from some stony hol- 
low. His dress was in keeping with the austerity 
of his life. A burnous of camels' hair, bound 
round his body by a leathern girdle, was his gar- 
ment. And then, all in the man was true and real. 
Not a reed shaken by the wind, but unbendingly 



42 "do penance" 

firm in deep and settled conviction; not ambitious 
nor self-seeking, but most humble in his self -esti- 
mate, discarding all claim but that of lowliest serv- 
ice, and pointing away from himself to "Him who 
was to come," and whom as yet he did not even 
know. Above all, there was the deepest earnest- 
ness, the most utter disregard of men, the firmest 
belief in what he announced. For himself he sought 
nothing : he was as a voice not to be inquired about, 
but heard ; for them he had only one absorbing 
thought: "Do penance; the Kingdom of heaven is 
at hand: the King is coming !" 

"Thfc Kingdom of heaven is at hand!" Such 
were the words that he uttered when, being then 
thirty years old, he left his retreat and appeared on 
the Lower Jordan. It was the late autumn of the 
year, of what we number as the year of Rome 779, 
whicfy it may be noted, was a Sabbatic year, a year 
of rest. Released from business and agriculture, 
the multitudes flocked around him as he passed to 
his mission. Rapidly the tidings spread from town 
and village to distant homesteads, still swelling the 
number that hastened to the banks of the sacred 
river to hear him and receive his baptism, confessing 
their sins. 

Standing on a sunlit eminence of peace and purity, 
unblinded by the petty mists that dim their vision, 
untroubled by the petty influences that disturb their 
life, the new Elias cried out to all: "Do penance. 



"you brood of vipers" 43 

Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight His 
paths/' To the Pharisees, the hypocrites, and to 
the Sadducees, the unbelievers of that day, his 
words were still more fiery: "You brood of vipers, 
who told you to flee from the coming wrath ? Now 
produce fruit that answers to repentance. The 
axe is lying all ready at the root of the tree; any tree 
that is not producing good fruit will be cut down 
and thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water 
for repentance, but He who is coming after me is 
mightier, and I am not fit even to carry His sandals ; 
He will baptize you with the holy Spirit of fire. 
His winnowing- fan is in His hand, He will clean out 
His threshing-floor, His wheat He will gather into 
the barn, but the straw He will burn with fire un- 
quenchable." 

To others, no doubt, gentler tones succeeded. 
There were persuasions to a better life. There were 
hints and more than hints of better public condi- 
tions and of brighter personal hopes. The great 
political yearnings and beliefs of the Jews were 
gathered into a form vague at first, then clearer, 
then definite, then positive. The speaker threat- 
ened, but he promised; he condemned, but he re- 
assured. He scathed his hearers for their vices, but 
he flung before them the banner of their great Na- 
tional Hope, their long-cherished, proud, and splen- 
did expectation: "Your Deliverer is within reach! 
He whom ye have trusted and awaited is close at 



44 "the coming one has come!" 

hand. Behold, He cometh! Prepare the way for 
Him." 



II 



But lo! now the Coming One has come, the Un- 
f alien, Unsinning Man is here ! 

It was in the winter of the year 780, on the 6th or 
10th of January. 

There was not in the past any personal acquaint- 
ance between the Christ and the Baptist. But the 
All-knowing knew John, and John, the pure of 
heart, felt the awful presence of the Son of God. 
And the Son of God stepped down into the river. 
At once John perceived that He was seeking the 
humiliation of baptism and strove to prevent Him: 
"I ought to be baptized by Thee, and comest Thou 
to me ? And Jesus answering said to him : Suffer 
it to be so now. For so it becometh us to fulfill all 
justice. Then he suffered Him. And Jesus being 
baptized, forthwith came out of the water: and lo, 
the heavens were opened to Him: and He saw the 
Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming 
upon Him. And behold a voice from heaven, say- 
ing : This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well 
pleased." 

This was the first time that the Holy Trinity, One 
God in Three Persons, that showed Itself to men — 
the Father in the Voice from heaven, the Son in the 



"behold the lamb of god" 45 

Sacred Human Nature, the Holy Ghost in the form 
of a Dove. 

A few weeks went by. It was after Christ's 
fasting in the wilderness. John saw Jesus ap- 
proaching and he again gave this solemn testimony, 
that this was indeed the Messiah who had been 
marked out by the appointed sign: "Behold the 
Lamb of God," he exclaimed, "Behold Him who 
taketh away the sin of the world." To the minds of 
the Baptist's hearers the words must have connoted 
many intimations, for the term "Lamb" here ad- 
dressed to our Savior is replete with meaning. It 
declared the meek, gentle, innocent character of the 
Messiah, which had been described by the prophets. 
"He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a 
sheep before his shearers is dumb, so He opened 
Not His mouth," Isaias had said. "But I was like a 
lamb that is carried to be a victim," Jeremias had 
sung. The lamb * is in numberless passages of the 
Scriptures fitly chosen as the personification of in- 
nocence and gentleness, the leading characteristics 
of Christ. In calling Him the Lamb of God, direct 
testimony is given to His Divine Nature. More- 

1 There is something mystical in the Hebrew word for 
"lambs." Kebashim is the term used, and it comes from the 
verb Kabhas, which means to wash. "This," Hillel says, "be- 
cause the two lambs offered every day in the Temple wash 
away the sins of Israel." We cannot follow the great rabbi 
in his deductions, but the remark is worth being noted as 
applied to "the Lamb of God who has washed us in His blood." 



46 A WONDROUS SENTENCE 

over, there is in the appellation a direct allusion to 
His character as the great Paschal Lamb, who 
through the shedding of His blood on the Cross, 
would atone for the world's sin, even as the blood of 
the lamb long ago had been the sign and symbol of 
Israel's salvation from Egypt. 

"There is a world of meaning in that wondrous 
sentence, one of the most wondrous in the Bible," 
says Dr. Breen. "Mankind had waited for thou- 
sands of years for these words. A long list of 
generations had gone down to the grave with their 
hopes to hear these words. A throb of exaltation 
must have surged through the Baptist's heart, as he 
pointed to the fulfillment of the world's hopes. 
What a decisive event in the history of humanity, 
when John introduced upon the stage Him who 
broke the soul's thraldom, and took away the curse 
of death." 

As for us, who live no more in anxious expecta- 
tion, but in the beneficent reality of the Redemption, 
we know that by His candor and kindness Jesus was 
indeed the Lamb of God to all who saw Him. And 
although we do not want to anticipate the events 
which, three years later, so strangely unfolded them- 
selves on the slopes of Calvary, we cannot forbear 
reminding ourselves that Jesus let Himself be sold 
and slain as a Lamb for our salvation. 

A day is to come when the Cross, loaded with its 



IN THE APOCALYPSE 47 

precious burden and crimsoned with Divine Blood, 
will be heavily jerked into the hole ready to receive 
it. Jesus, whose heart-strings will crack under the 
sway, will faintly moan a plaintive moan — the bleat- 
ing of the Lamb — to which will answer, from the 
Temple on the hill, the blast of the sacred trumpet 
announcing the slaying of the symbolic Paschal 
Lamb. Perhaps some of those who will be there 
will remember the words of John the Baptist. And 
perhaps tears of regret will well from their eyes. 

Later on, John the Evangelist will see the vision 
of which he speaks in the Apocalypse. In a mys- 
tical ecstasy he will behold Jesus as the Lamb that 
was slain and that purchased souls for God out of 
all tribes and nations, that washed them clean in His 
Blood, and thereby made of them a royal priestly 
people ; as the Lamb that with His Blood strengthens 
the Church militant, making it victorious in its com- 
bats with Satan; as the Lamb, that is, the brilliant 
light of the heavenly Jerusalem, conducting the 
blessed to the fountains of the waters of life; as the 
Lamb worthy to receive power and divinity and wis- 
dom and strength and honor and glory and benedic- 
tion; as the Lamb to whom all creation and all the 
choirs of angels present praise and adoration. 

As the lamb in holy Scripture is a standing sym- 
bol of Christ, and as the citizens of Heaven bless 
the Lamb without ceasing, so also does the Church 



48 IN LITURGY 

love to invoke Jesus Christ in a simple, touching 
manner as "the Lamb of God." Throughout all 
ages there continues ever to resound in her liturgy 
this present supplication to the divine, eternal, sacri- 
ficial Lamb, who has taken upon Himself the sins of 
the world and thereby effaced them. As often as 
she administers Holy Communion to the faithful, 
she exhorts them in the words of John the Baptist : 
"Behold the Lamb of God! Behold Him who 
taketh away the sin of the world !" to realize and 
value the wealth of grace contained in this heavenly 
sacrificial food. Almost all her litanies conclude 
with the solemn invocation to the Lamb of God, 
"to spare us, to hearms, and to have mercy on us." 

The Church has ever been accustomed to repre- 
sent the Divine Savior both under the figure of the 
Good Shepherd and also under the symbol of the 
Lamb; both images are intimately connected with 
each other. Jesus is the Good Shepherd, who be- 
came Himself our Sacrificial Lamb on the Cross, 
and who daily becomes the same again on the altar ; 
He is the Good Shepherd, who gave His life for us 
and who, with His living flesh and Heart's blood, 
nourishes us to an eternal life of blessedness. 

From the Sacrificial Lamb present on the altar 
there streams forth salvation and redemption, there 
flows to us all the favor of God, and all the peace of 
God. This Lamb that was slain from the be- 



THE BANQUET OF THE LAMB 49 

ginning of the world and that will be slain unto the 
end of the world, we should during Mass, filled with 
humility and fervor, adore and invoke in order that 
we may obtain the fulness of mercy and peace, 
whereby we shall be prepared for admittance "to 
the royal banquet of the Lamb." 



CHAPTER V 

A COUNTRY WEDDING 

On the third day after His Baptism on the banks 
of the Jordan, Jesus went to a little Galilean village, 
called Cana, that is "the Reedy Place." He was no 
longer alone; several of the disciples of John the 
Baptist, leaving their first master, had followed 
Him; conquered to His cause, they were to be His 
co-workers — and co-sufferers. 

Here, condescending as indeed He always was, 
Jesus consented to honor with His presence the mar- 
riage of a young couple whom perhaps He had 
known in Nazareth. 

To say it by the way, in those times in the land of 
Galilee, even as in Greece, nuptial ceremonies began 
at twilight. 

It was the custom "to bear away the bride from 

home at blushing shut of day," or even later, far on 

into the night, covered from head to foot in her loose 

and flowing veil, garlanded with flowers and dressed 

in her fairest robes. She was heralded by torchlight, 

with songs and dances, and the music of the drum 

and flute, to the bridegroom's home. She was at- 

50 



IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 5 1 

tended by the maidens of the village, and the bride- 
groom came to meet her with his youthful friends. 
The Talmud has preserved a snatch of one of the 
songs sung by the bridesmaids and girls as they 
danced before the bride, on the way to the bride- 
groom's house. In a free translation it runs some- 
thing like this : 

"Her eyelids are not stained with blue, 

Her red cheeks are her own; 
Her hair hangs waving as it grew, 
Her grace were wealth, alone !" 

Now it must be borne in mind that marriage con- 
veyed to the Jews much higher thoughts than merely 
those of merriment and gaiety. It was looked upon 
as a sort of sacrament. The pious fasted and 
prayed before it, confessing their sins. A bridal 
pair on their marriage-day symbolized the union of 
God with Israel. The bold allegory of the times 
was that God Himself had spoken the words of 
blessing over the cup at the union of Adam and 
Eve when Michael and Gabriel acted as groomsmen, 
and the choir of angels sang the wedding hymn. 
And a haggadah, or old saying, sets forth that when 
Jezebel was eaten by dogs, her hands were spared, 
because amidst all her wickedness, she had been wont 
to greet every marriage-procession by clapping of 
hands. A most sacred affair, therefore, was a mar- 



52 IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 

riage ceremony, not unworthy of the presence of 
Christ. 

But let us read how St. John in his gospel re- 
lates the story of this plain country wedding which 
was destined to be the most famous in history. 

"And the third day, there was a marriage in Cana 
of Galilee : and the mother of Jesus was there. And 
Jesus also was invited, and His disciples, to the mar- 
riage. And the wine running short the mother of 
Jesus said to Him: They have no wine. And 
Jesus said to her : Woman, what is that to Me and to 
thee? My hour is not yet come." (To our ears 
the expression sounds strange and almost harsh but 
to Oriental ears they would not. "Woman" was a 
title of reverence, and "What is it to Me and to 
thee?" simply meant: "It is no concern of ours;" the 
literal version of a common Aramaic phrase which is 
consistent with the most delicate courtesy. And 
then who knows whether the words were not said 
with one of those smiles of filial love which can 
make everything most acceptable to a mother?) 
"His mother said to the waiters: Whatsoever He 
shall say to you, do ye. Now six stone water- jars 
were standing there, for the Jewish rites of puri- 
fication, each holding about twenty gallons. Jesus 
said, Fill up the jars with water. So they filled 
them to the brim. Then He said, Now draw some 
out, and take it to the manager of the feast. They 
did so; and when the manager of the feast tasted the 



THE SON Of man 53 

water which had become wine, not knowing where it 
had come from, though the servants who had 
drawn it knew, he called the bridegroom and said 
to him, Everybody serves the good wine first, and 
then the poorer wine after people have well drunk; 
but thou hast kept the good wine till now. Jesus 
performed this, the first of His Signs at Cana in 
Galilee, and His disciples believed in Him." 

Jesus at the very outset of His public ministry 
desires to point out the spirit of His Mission. His 
first testimony about Himself was to call Himself 
"the Son of Man," and this bore reference to the 
confession of Nathanael : "Thou art the Son of God ; 
Thou art the King of Israel." He is the Son of 
Man as well as the Son of God, and so it pleases 
Him to mingle with humanity, to share its joys and 
its sorrows in order to sanctify them, to teach that 
common life in all its phases may be raised to a re- 
ligious dignity, to teach also that the loving smile 
of God, like the tender blue above, looks down on 
the whole round of existence. In the seclusion of 
the wilderness John has been an ascetic; he has spo- 
ken only of penance and austerity; he has driven 
guilty souls to him to sow in them the seeds of dread ; 
Jesus with the silken cords of love draws them, 
even in the midst of banquets and festivities, to sow 
in them the seeds of love; anywhere, anyhow, a 
Good Shepherd He seeks for the lost sheep of man- 
kind. He spiritualizes the humblest duties of life 



54 IN THE WORLD BUT NOT OF IT 

and sanctifies its simplest incidents, so as to ennoble 
it as a whole. Human enjoyments He does not dis- 
approve as unholy; His religion is not to thrive on 
the repression of every cheerful emotion. He mixes 
with the crowd of men and affects no singularity; 
He takes part in the innocent pleasures of life, 
and interests Himself in all that interests men at 
large, and yet, amidst all, remains the Conse- 
crated One and the Sinless One; in the world, by 
sympathy and active brotherhood, but not of it; 
human in His outward form, but heavenly in 
His elevation and spirit. On this pattern also 
He fashions His Church, our Church, the Cath- 
olic Church. 

And if at times, His new disciples, accustomed as 
they were to hear the echo of the wrath of the Lord 
from the lips of the man of the desert, are sur- 
prised at or take amiss the humaneness of this new 
Master — understanding not that the law of fear is 
dead and the law of love is born — then He is 
ready to establish by a miracle that although He 
knows how to be condescending and charitable, He 
is nevertheless the Divine One having authority 
over all things, "the fulness of the Godhead dwelling 
in Him corporally." 

And to-day was His first Miracle, and to-day 
thus with a symbolic purpose did He manifest His 
glory : "and His Disciples believed in Him." 



r A PASSAGE OF ST. AUGUSTINE 55 

II 

His Disciples believed in Him and in His power 
of performing miracles. But nowadays, O my sons 
of the soil, men are found who refuse to give Him 
such assent. "A miracle is impossible/' they cry 
out. "Possible it may be," others exclaim, "but 
it cannot be proved scientifically." And they would 
fain, if Jesus would come back to earth, summon 
Him to their laboratories, to test Him and judge 
whether His principles agree with their theories. 
Fools! They know not what they prattle about. 
Their presumption, if not blasphemous, were 
ludicrous. They talk as though it were God's duty, 
— the duty of Him to whom the sea and the moun- 
tains are a very tiny thing, and before whose eyes 
the starry heaven is but as one white gleam in the 
sky, — to explain His method of acting. They talk 
as though the finite could comprehend the infinite. 
They deny miracles, they deny their possibility. 
But as Veuillot has well said, after St. Augustine, 
speaking of this very miracle of the water changed 
into wine: "What else do we see done here in an 
hour than nature does more slowly round the year? 
The wine which the guests had drunk from the bride- 
groom's bounty, and possibly from the added gifts 
of friends, had been slowly matured from the vine 
by mysterious elaboration, from light, and heat, and 



56 A FACT EASILY OVERLOOKED 

moisture, and by the salts of the earth, none of which 
had more apparent affinity to it than the water which 
Jesus transformed. The miracle in nature is not 
less real or wonderful than that of the marriage 
feast, and strikes us less only by its being familiar. 
At the threshold of Christ's miraculous works it is 
well to realize a fact so easily overlooked. A miracle 
is only an exercise, in a new way, of the Almighty 
power we see daily producing the same results in 
nature. Infinitely varied forces are at work around 
us every moment. From the sun to the atom, from 
the stone to the thinking brain and beating heart, 
they circulate sleeplessly, through all things, forever. 
As they act and react on each other, the amazing 
result is produced which we know as nature, but how 
many mysterious inter-relations, of which we know 
nothing, may offer endlessly varied means for pro- 
ducing specific ends, at the command of God? Nor 
is there anything more amazing in the works of 
Christ than in the daily phenomena of nature. The 
vast universe, embracing heavens above heavens, 
stretching out into the Infinite — with constellations 
anchored on the vast expanse like tiny islet clusters 
on the boundless ocean, is one great miracle. It 
was wonderful to create, but to sustain creation is, 
itself, to create anew, each moment. Suns and 
planets, living creatures in their endless races, all 
that the round sky of each planet covers — seas, air, 
sweeping valleys, lofty mountains, and the million 



THE GREAT GUEST 57 

wonders of the brain and heart, and life, of their in- 
numerable populations, have no security, each 
moment, that they shall commence another, except 
in the continual expenditure of fresh creative 
energy. Miracles are only the momentary intercala- 
tion, or rather, insertion, of unsuspected laws which 
startle by their novelty, but are no more wonderful 
than the most common incident of the great mystery 
of nature." 



Ill 



But beside the remembrance of a miracle, the 
presence of Jesus at the wedding of Cana brings 
home to our heart other precious lessons. 

We know nothing of the happy young people who 
had among their guests the Savior of the world, His 
first Apostles and His mother, the Virgin Mary ; even 
their name is unknown, because, no doubt, in the 
thought of the Master, He was there not to favor a 
special couple, but to institute, honor and sanctify 
the very sacrament of matrimony. We know of 
them only one detail, a very simple one, but sublime 
in its simplicity: they had invited Jesus to their 
nuptials. 

May their example be ever followed, may Jesus 
be the principal Guest at every Christian marriage! 
Catholic people have ever accompanied with rejoic- 
ings the solemnizations of the sacrament of matri- 



58 INVITE JESUS 

mony. Each State in America has its own customs 
and traditions, which may vary here and there, but 
there is one point always the same: style, flowers, 
music, dances, banquets, profusion of gaiety, 
promises and hopes: well and good they are, but 
too often the worldly note is too conspicuous while 
the religious side is neglected. In our parishes it 
sometimes happens that dissipation enters and in- 
vades even the place where the Holy One resides, 
and then goes on and has full sway during the rest 
of the day — a day most solemn and sacred, destined 
to re-echo into the portals of time and eternity. 

That such scandal may not happen on your 
children's wedding day, O fathers and mothers, 
invite Jesus at their feast of Cana. He will 
perhaps not perform a miracle for them, but He 
will tarry with them and keep intact their undying 
love in the home of their hearts. He will be to 
them a Guide and an Advisor, a Moderator in hours 
of joy and a Comforter in the days of pain, ready 
to appear at the first call, ready to avert from them 
the sufferings which torture the body and the 
mournings which tear and try the soul. Without 
Him there is no purity nor peace; but with Him 
less heavy will be the burden of the days, less pain- 
ful the sacrifices of common life, more gladsome 
the placing of the new born babe in the cradle of 
love. His holy and divine presence will avert from 
them the hideously hellish plague of divorce, which, 



EIGHT GOOD RULES 59 

under the mantle of an iniquitous legislation, claims 
to tear asunder what God hath joined together. 

Under the fallacious pretext of breaking the chains 
accepted with joy, but now too binding, it not only 
wrecks the lives of the individuals who are parties 
to the scandalous proceedings, but threatens the 
very existence of civilized society by the inevitable 
destruction of family life, and gives rise to a 
generation of men and women wholly devoid of the 
most essential virtues of good citizenship — reverence 
for parents, love of home, and respect for authority. 

To conclude this chapter I will now quote a few 
golden rules which I borrow from that widespread, 
excellent booklet, "How to get married" : 

( 1 ) Both young and old should look upon mar- 
riage as a sacred and important state of life. 

(2) Young people should avoid long courtships 
and late marriages. 

(3) Parents should never permit children 
whilst still at school or under eighteen to keep 
company, — or to associate freely with the other sex. 

(4) Courting should not be done in secret, or 
in the late hours of the night. Well meaning men 
are not afraid to visit with the whole family or to 
go home at a seasonable hour. 

(5) Married people should bear in mind that 
neglect of prayers, of regular attendance at Mass, 
and of frequent reception of the sacraments almost 
invariably leads to trouble in the family. 



6o SEE YOUR PASTOR 

(6) Misunderstandings should not be aired 
among relatives, neighbors, or in public. They 
should be laid before the pastor before they have 
gone too far. 

(7) Catholics have no right to appeal to the 
civil courts in any marriage case without getting 
the previous consent of the Church. 

(8) Catholic lawyers should not accept divorce 
cases without consulting the pastor or some other 
priest, and non-Catholic lawyers should be urged to 
do the same. 



CHAPTER VII 

ON HILLS AND MOUNTAINS 

We all love the hills and the mountains. If it 
were required to name the grandest natural objects 
upon earth, it is possible that their name would rise 
to the lips of not a few. In sublimity they take 
rank with the ocean and the clouds. They were 
chosen by the Psalmist to typify God's power, — 
"And the strength of the hills is His also." On the 
one hand, their height, their mass, and the deep 
planting of their roots in the earth; and on the 
other, the beauty which rests upon their varied out- 
lines, which clothes their sides and precipices, and 
lies among the wide valleys and deep glens, mark 
them out not only as the most conspicuous, but also 
as among the most attractive objects in the world. 
Nor is it without design that these grand features 
of the earth should twine themselves round the 
affections. Memory lingers over the dim outline 
of a mountain long after other scenes grouped 
round its base have faded away ; and one can easily 
understand that the eyes which day by day rest on 
the familiar hills and mountains must ultimately 

open up for them a way to the heart. Poets have 

61 



62 WHERE HEAVEN IS NEARER 

always praised their charm and beauty : in magnifi- 
cent terms, they tell us of the sun sending them at 
day-break the first kisses of his light, and coming to 
rest on them as on a throne of glory; they sing of 
the clouds of heaven lowering themselves to their 
summits, where lie ice and snow, inexhaustible 
reservoirs whence will flow, until the end of time, 
brooks, creeks, and rivers. Scientists tell us their 
genesis and their intimate history: "the dry land 
appeared," they say, "not in level sands forsaken 
by the surges which those surges might again claim 
for their own; but in range beyond range of swell- 
ing hill and iron rock, for ever to claim kindred with 
the firmament and be companioned by the clouds." 
Theologians unfold with eloquence the lessons that 
come from the heights, while historians relate the 
deeds done on them. Souls given to contemplation 
have ever longed to live on the hills where the air is 
purer and heaven is nearer, and where it is easier to 
commune with God. 

It was ever so with Jesus : 

"He always loved the mountain tops, for there 
Away from earth, He treads the mystic ways, 
And sees the vision of the Fairest Fair, 

Heaven dawns upon His raptured gaze; 
The loneliness, the pain, the grief depart; 
Surpassing gladness fills His Sacred Heart." 

I do not intend to speak of the events which in 



r A COMPARISON 63 

the Old Testament had mountains for their theatre, 
but before we go with Jesus on the Mount of 
Beatitudes, we cannot forbear glancing on the 
contrast between the New Law, the law of love as 
given on Mt. Kurn Hattin, and the Old Law, the law 
of fear as proclaimed on Mt. Sinai. 

"We think of that," says Farrar, "as a fiery law, 
whose promulgation is surrounded by the imagery 
of thunders and lightnings, and the voice of the 
trumpet sounding long and waxing louder and 
louder. We think of this as flowing forth in 
divinest music amid all the calm and loveliness of 
the clear and quiet dawn. That came dreadfully 
to the startled conscience from an Unseen Presence, 
shrouded by wreathing clouds, and destroying fire, 
and eddying smoke; this was uttered by a sweet 
human voice that moved the heart most gently in 
words of peace. That was delivered on the 
desolate and storm-rent hill which seems with its 
red granite crags to threaten the scorching wilder- 
ness; this on the flowery grass of the green hill-side 
which slopes down to the silver lake. That shook 
the heart with terror and agitation; this soothed it 
with peace and love. And yet the New Command- 
ments of the Mount of Beatitudes were not meant 
to abrogate, but rather to complete the Law which 
was spoken from Sinai to them of old. The Law 
was founded on the eternal distinctions of right and 
wrong — distinctions strong and irremovable as the 



64 OPENING HIS HEART 

granite bases of the world. Easier would it be to 
sweep away the heaven and the earth, than to destroy 
the least letter of that code which contains the very 
principles of all moral life/' 



II 



Hitherto the Master had not found an audience 
trained enough in the things from above to under- 
stand Him; later on, surrounded by enemies who 
will spy out every word and step of His He will not 
have the same liberty, and will be compelled mostly 
always when in public to speak in figures or in para- 
bles. But today His enemies are not yet harassing 
Him and pursuing Him everywhere. He can, 
therefore, open His heart and reveal to the enrap- 
tured multitude the treasures of light, love, and life 
which He had for them. 

No less than the time was the scenery appropriate 
to His own method of oratory, simple and sublime — 
sublime because simple. Lilies stud the meadows, 
shrubs bristle with thorns, vines reach out their ten- 
drils to the props, thistles grow at the foot of the 
fig trees, birds are singing in the air; not very far 
from here dogs are barking, those dogs to which 
nothing holy must be given, and swine before which 
no pearls must be cast are wallowing in the mire; 
fishermen from the Lake near by are here who will 
never offer a serpent to their children who want a 



"blessed! blessed! blessed!" 65 

fish; yonder is the city built upon the hill, and the 
mountain-hamlets along whose roads salt that has 
lost its savor has been thrown away ; and the lowly 
homes with their one candle lit in the evening and 
put upon a candlestick near the bushel with which 
they measure corn. 

And so on such a day and at such a spot, seeing 
at His feet the numberless multitude drawn by the 
tenderness of His Majesty and longing to see Him, 
Jesus opened His divine lips and uttered 
the heavenly Beatitudes. Solemnly He pro- 
claimed the code of true worship in spirit and 
in truth. 

"Blessed! Blessed! Blessed !" Belief in bliss 
offered to all and accessible to all, became with Jesus 
an article of divine faith. 

Until this blessed hour moralists and poets had in 
lengthy and learned lessons and in exquisitely chis- 
elled lyrics asserted that bliss, human bliss, is found 
here below only in the midst of honor, riches, and 
pleasures ; few were those who claimed to see it in 
the midst of duty. And with such masters and 
guides, humanity that longed for happiness, had 
discovered that wealth, glory, and mirth were only 
other words for weariness, disgust, and misery. 

And lo ! Jesus cried out : 

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the 
Kingdom of heaven ! 

Blessed the meek, for they shall possess the land ! 



66 BLISS OFFERED TO ALL 

Blessed they that mourn, for they shall be com- 
forted ! 

Blessed they that hunger and thirst after justice, 
for they shall be filled! 

Blessed the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy! 

Blessed the clean of heart, for they shall see God ! 

Blessed the peace-makers for they shall be called 
children of God 

Blessed they .that suffer persecution for justice' 
sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven !" 

Thus spoke the God-Man setting, contrary to 
the moral ideas of antiquity, relative happiness in 
the lowliness of the present life, and absolute 
happiness in the joys of the future life; casting 
aside glory as vain, riches as deceitful, pleasure as 
wearisome. 

And His life was in unison with His moral doc- 
trine: from His birth, through all His acts, con- 
stantly He proved that He despised the hollow toys 
to the pursuit of which mankind rushes ; constantly 
He proved that He had faith in the power of self- 
sacrifice, poverty and persecutions. Born in a stable 
He was compelled a few days after the Christmas 
Night to fly into Egypt to escape Herod's hired 
murderers. And all along His life, in the midst of 
misery and opposition He proves by His patience and 
resignation, and last by His Passion that they alone 
find happiness here below who unfalteringly do the 
will of God. 



BEATITUDES, ONLY A PROLOGUE 6? 

Those who have believed in the divine word — the 
martyrs in the arena, the apostles in pagan lands, the 
hermits in the wilderness, the virgins in the cloister, 
all the saints of the New Law, kings or slaves, nobles 
or peasants — all have said after Him: "Blessed are 
we in the midst of the afflictions of the passing hour, 
because thereby we acquire endless glory and hap- 
piness." Indeed, how many of them have felt, to a 
degree unthought of by those whose heart is cai- 
tiff or cowardly, what sweetness and what a reward 
God has in store even here below for those who 
draw their happiness at the sources shown by Jesus ! 
And when we think that for nineteen centuries the 
life of the saints has ever been an illustration of the 
heavenly Beatitudes, we wonder not that the Church 
has chosen this fragment of the Gospels as the por- 
tion to be read on All-Saints Day. 

The Beatitudes are only the prologue. The whole 
sermon on the Mount we should quote, for it is the 
code of the new law, the new and last revelation; it 
is the voice of God, speaking in the utterance of 
man to one and to all, to the learned and to the un- 
learned, to the young and to the old ; to borrow the 
image of St. Augustine: "It is a great sea whose 
smiling surface breaks into refreshing ripples at the 
feet of our little ones, but into whose unfathomable 
depths the wisest may gaze with the shudder of 
amazement and the thrill of love." Invited is the 
reader to peruse the whole sermon in the family 



68 A FEW OTHER MORSELS 

Bible, for, after all, the actual text is different from 
everything else in the world, and therefore the work 
is different from what is done by anything else, 
however excellent in its kind. Just to whet your 
appetite I will gather here a few morsels : 

"You are the salt of the earth. But if salt be- 
comes insipid, what can make it salt again ? After 
that it is fit for nothing, fit only to be thrown out- 
side and trodden by the feet of men. 

"You are the light of the world. So is your 
light to shine before men that they may see the good 
you do and glorify your Father in heaven. 

"Whoever is angry with his brother will be sen- 
tenced by God. So if you remember, even when 
you are offering your gift at the altar, that your 
brother has any grievance against you, leave your 
gift at the very altar and go away; first be reconciled 
to your brother, then come back and offer your gift. 

"Be quick and make terms with your opponent, 
so long as you and he are on the way to court, in 
case he hands you over to the judge, and the judge 
to the jailer, and you are thrown into prison; truly 
I tell you, you will never get out till you pay the 
last penny of your debt. 

"Let what you say be simply 'yes' or W ; what- 
ever exceeds that springs from evil. 

"You have heard the saying, 'You must love 
your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you 
love your enemies and pray for those who persecute 



GOOD FOR US ALL 69 

you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven : 
he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and 
sends rain on the just and the unjust. For if you 
love only those who love you, what reward do you 
get for that ? 

"Take care not to practice your charity before 
men in order to be noticed ; otherwise you get no re- 
ward from your Father in heaven. 

"When you give alms, do not let your left hand 
know what your right hand is doing, so as to keep 
your alms secret; then your Father who sees what 
is secret will reward you. 

"When you fast, do not look gloomy like the 
hypocrites, for they look woebegone to let men see 
they are fasting. 

"Store up no treasures for yourselves on earth, 
where moth and rust corrode, where thieves break 
in and steal: store up treasures for yourselves in 
heaven, where neither moth nor rust corrode, where 
thieves do not break in and steal. 

"No one can serve two masters: either he will 
hate the one and love the other, or else he will stand 
by the one and despise the other — yoir cannot serve 
God and Mammon. 

"Judge not, that you may not be judged your- 
selves, for as you judge so you will be judged, and 
the measure you deal out to others will be dealt out 
to yourselves. 

"Why do you note the splinter in your brother's 



70 "as one having power" 

eye and fail to see the beam in your own eye? How 
can you say to your brother, 'Let me take out the 
splinter from your eye/ when there lies the beam in 
your own eye? You hypocrite! take the beam out 
of your own eye first, and then you will see properly 
how to take the splinter out of your brother's eye. 

"Ask and it shall be given to you, seek and you 
shall find ; knock and it shall be opened to you ; for 
every one who asks receives, the seeker finds, the 
door is opened to anyone who knocks. 

"Whatever you would like men to do for you, do 
just the same to them. 

"It is not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord !' 
who will get into the Realm of heaven, but he who 
does the will of My Father in heaven. 

"Now, everyone who listens to these my words 
and acts upon them will be like a prudent man who 
built his house on rock. The rain came down, the 
floods rose, the winds blew and beat upon that 
house, but it did not fall, for it was founded on 
rock. And everyone who listens to these my words 
and does not act upon them will be like a stupid man 
who built his house on sand. The rain came down, 
the floods rose, the winds blew and beat upon that 
house, and down it fell — with a mighty crash." 

No wonder that, when Jesus had finished his ad- 
dress, "the multitudes were astonished at His teach- 
ing : for He taught them as One having power, and 
not as their Scribes and Pharisees ;" not as the copy- 



A WORLD OF THOUGHTS J I 

ists, interpreters and translators of the Old Law but 
as the Real Author of the New Laws, destined to 
last forever. 

Verily Jesus has left us not only a life, but a rich 
world of thoughts, in which all the best inspirations 
and longings of mankind meet and are reflected. It 
is the expression of the purest and directest truths 
which rise in the depth of the soul, and they are made 
common to all mankind by being uttered in the 
simplest and most popular form. 



it 



CHAPTER VIII 

BIRDS OF THE AIR AND LILIES OF THE FIELD 

A sparrow lighted chirping on a spray 

Close to my window, as I knelt in prayer, 

Bowed by a heavy load of anxious care. 

The morn was bitter, but the bird was gay, 

And seemed by cheery look and chirp to say, 

'What though the snow conceals my wonted fare, 

Nor I have barn or store-house anywhere, 

Yet I trust heaven on a winter's day ?' 

That little bird came like a winged text 

Fluttering from out God's Ward to sooth my breast. 

What though my life with wintry cares be vexed, 

On a kind Father's watchful love I rest ; 

He meets this moment's need ; I leave the next ; 

And always trusting, shall be always blest?" 



In the previous chapter there is a passage which 
I have omitted on purpose and to which I want to 
return, for, short as it is, therein is found a whole 
treatise on Divine foreknowledge, or rather an hymn 
in honor of Divine Providence. 

"Be not anxious for your life, what you shall 
eat, or what you shall drink ; nor yet for your body 

what you shall put on. Is not the life more than the 

72 



CONFIDENCE IN GOD 73 

food, and the body than the raiment? Behold the 
birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do 
they reap, nor gather into barns, and your heavenly 
Father feedeth them. Are not you of much more 
value than they? And which of you by being 
anxious can add one cubit unto his stature? And 
why are you anxious concerning raiment? Con- 
sider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil 
not, neither do they spin. Yet I say unto you, that 
even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like 
one of these. But if God doth so clothe the grass 
of the field which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast 
into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, 
O you of little faith? Be not therefore anxious, 
saying : what shall we eat ? or, what shall we drink ? 
or, wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after 
all these things do the Gentiles seek; for your 
heavenly Father knoweth that you have need of all 
these things. But seek you first his righteousness, 
and his Kingdom; and all these things shall be 
added unto you. Be not therefore anxious for 
the morrow; for the morrow will be anxious for 
itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof/' 

What an invincible confidence in God these words 
should inspire within us, how well they should re- 
mind us that Our Father who is in heaven keeps us 
and preserves us with love and care! 

But for the present, since Jesus tells us to behold 
the birds of the heaven and the lilies of the field, let 



74 THROUGH NATURE TO GRACE 

us do so at once : for us country folk it will be an 
easy and pleasant task thus to go through nature to 
grace. 

And, first, we notice the birds possess perfect and 
most admirable adaptations for buoyancy and 
flight. Their heads are small, and pierce freely 
through the air; their vision is keen, and discerns 
their way-marks and destination and food at great 
distances ; their head and shoulders are gently swell- 
ing, and cleave the atmosphere with the least 
possible resistance; their frame is small, light and 
curved, and suited alike to ascend into the air and to 
float on the breeze; their interior has air-bags and 
cavities which make them almost as buoyant as 
balloons, and at the same time maintain a very 
extensive respiration for the double purpose of high 
heat and lofty vigor; their under plumage is strong 
and imbricated or overlapped, and also in most 
instances lubricated with an oily secretion which 
protects them from injury by rain or storm; their 
wings, which are made of a light material, are 
worked with muscles of very strong power, ana 
strike the air with most impulsive force; and their 
tail has a relative adjustment similar to the rudder 
of a ship, but with greater activity and incomparably 
freer command, and steers them like life, steadily 
and promptly, in the precise line of their wished- for 
course. Every feather is a wonder, and every wing 
a museum. 



THEIR MELODY 75 

But birds are also surpassingly beautiful and 
charming. There are thousands and thousands of 
kinds, and yet all are lovely, all exhibit an endless 
diversity of grace and gorgeousness and song. 
They seem to belong to Eden rather than to this sin- 
defaced earth, and are suggestive to good men of an 
everlasting paradise in the heavens. How para- 
mount above all statuary are their forms! How 
rich above all festoonings and draperies are their 
waving plumes and feathery ringlets! How 
glorious above all pictures, how far beyond com- 
parison with anything except flowers and winged 
insects, are their tints and burnishings of color! 
And how immensely superior to the rough measures 
of human music, how entirely like the faint far 
away responses of the primal paradise to the hymns 
of the angels, are the thrillings and warblings of 
their melody ! 

With Browning, we say : 

"Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge 
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover 

Blossoms and dewdrops — at the bent spray's edge — 
That's the wise thrush ; he sings each song twice over 

Lest you should think he never could recapture 

The first fine careless rapture!" 

Nor can any strong reason, or scarcely any reason 
at all, be discovered by physiologists, why birds need 
such exquisite beauty, or any of their fine hues, or 



j6 OUR FATHER 

of their powers of song. They clearly possess all 
their attractions as a ministry of pleasure to man. 
They embellish our forests and amuse our walks; 
and whether we saunter around our home or wander 
to a distance, some of them always attend us, to 
please our eyes and ears, and to raise our admiring 
thoughts to the God of nature and of Providence. 

But there is no need to expatiate any longer on 
the wonders of the birds, for this is not a manual of 
ornithology. We all know that all birds enjoy 
organs and instinct necessary to look for, to find 
out and to seize upon their food : we all know that 
the general providence of God provides that they 
get food. 

"Now," as Doctor Breen says, "the love which 
God has for the creatures cannot be compared to 
that which He has for man. He made them and 
all other things in this world for man. He is only 
the Creator of these; He is the Father of man. He 
gave to man His own image and likeness ; He gave 
him an immortal soul capable of immortality, 
capable of knowing and loving God Himself. Nay 
more, the Word became incarnate for man. 
Certainly therefore that Providence which provides 
for the birds of the air that have no power to know 
or love God, that die and are no more, will provide 
for the being which He has raised to such a dignity, 
and for whom He has done so much. ,, 

Let us note however with Dr. Martineau, that 



NOT TO REIGN BUT TO WRESTLE yy 

"although our Heavenly Father feeds the birds, 
the birds stay not at home expecting crumbs of 
manna to drop from rich tables in the skies. They 
are not found empty of all appetency, regardless of 
the changing year, and hanging ever upon miracle. 
On the contrary their whole existence is a con- 
tinual quest after that physical good which is their 
true and only end; and to pilfer the garden and the 
field, to skip and sip the stream, to dress their plu- 
mage with finer gloss, and sing the song of glad re- 
pletion, is their work from morn to night. What 
eager industry flutters in the spring around the 
skirts of the plantation, gathering the bits and 
brakes scattered for them by the winter's storm! 
What busy preparations, at autumn's first chill 
wind, wheels and musters overhead, for the long 
flight over Southern seas, the swift cheering on the 
slow, and the young supporting the old! What 
studious watch, under the semblance of flashing 
sport, does the home-loving swallow keep !" 

Like the birds must we act. "That which God 
giveth us we must gather up." "In due season He 
openeth His hand and filleth with blessing every 
living creature, ,, but we must work to get that bless- 
ing, for we are not here to reign, but to wrestle. 
God will supply our wants, not without activity of 
ours, but by means of it; not by casual miracle, but 
by constant law; by putting His skill within us, as 
well as spreading His affluence without. 



78 THE SMILE OF GOD 

II 

After the birds come the flowers, the flowers 
which according to poets, were born from the 
smile of God upon the earth, and show in freckle, 
streak or stain some touch of His unrivalled pencil. 
Listen to Christina Rossetti : 

"Flowers preach to us if we will hear: — 
The rose saith in the dewy morn, 
I am most fair; 
Yet all my loveliness is born 
Upon a thorn. 

The lilies say: Behold how we 
Preach, without words, of purity. 
The violets whisper from the shade 
Which their own leaves have made: 
Men scent our fragrance in the air, 
Yet take no •heed 
Of humble lessons we would read. 
But not alone the fairest flowers: 
The merest grass 

Along the roadside where we pass, 
Lichen and moss and sturdy weed, 
Tell of His love who sends the dew, 
The rain and the sunshine too, 
To nourish one small seed." 

"God clothes the lilies/' Alford says, "as never 
man in his pomp, as never woman in her beauty, 
was yet bedecked. One of these wayside flowers, if 



WE MUST TRUST HIM 79 

we could see all the secrets and all the blending* of 
its colors, if we could penetrate all the laws which 
regulate the symmetry and elegance of its form, if 
we could appreciate all the care bestowed by the Cre- 
ator on the delicacy and complexion of its texture, 
would put all human adornment to shame. If we 
try one of these with the power of the micro- 
scope, — the more we magnify it, the more glories of 
form and color, the more intricate symmetries of 
texture, astonish the dazzled eye: subject to the 
same test the most delicately-woven fabric of 
human skill, the most precise and uniform artifi- 
cial application of color, and as it expands before 
the scrutiny, it degenerates into a coarse and un- 
seemly mass, daubed as if by an unskillful hand. 
He who has lavished all this exquisite skill on the 
rank growth of the field, which is flourishing to-day, 
and cut down and dried up and burnt to-morrow, 
shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little 
faith ? Will not He, in His good Providence, bring 
about for all of us who serve Him and seek to do 
His will, a sufficient and seemly supply of what is 
needful and what is becoming for the clothing of 
the body? We are to trust Him with the suste- 
nance of our lives, we are to trust Him with shelter- 
ing and arraying us. We are better employed than 
that we ought to distrust our thoughts day by day 
about these matters : we have no time to bestow on 
them as life's business : they must not eat out the 



80 HE CARES FOR US 

spirit of a sound and earnest mind, — they must not 
unteach us self-denial, they must not be clamoring 
when we ought to be listening to the whisper of 
sympathy and God's spirit: they must not ever be 
rising as drifts of clouds, troubling the clear morn- 
ing of the day, and blotting the Sun of Right- 
eousness by whose light we walk and work. This it 
is, and no impossible, no exaggerated casting away 
of earthly cares which the Lord requires of us. It 
is the knowing what we are, and who cares for us, 
and acting in that knowledge. It is told of Caesar, 
that being at sea in a storm, and beholding the 
shipman unmanned with fear, he cried, 'Fear not; 
thou hast Caesar on board/ This was carrying 
greatness of soul even to infirmity: it is pre- 
sumption for a man to put that trust in his fortunes, 
and to have that confidence in his own work in the 
world: but it is no undue confidence in us, and it 
savors of no presumption to say to our anxious 
souls when the^ distract us with fear for this life's 
welfare, Tear not: thou earnest a precious spirit 
bound for the blessed country afar: the Father 
breathed it into thee, the Son bled for it, the Holy 
Ghost guideth and sanctifieth it : thou art freighted 
with covenant promises, and the fruits of a Christian 
life stored up against the final harvest: be not thou 
troubled with daily anxieties: only keep thine 
hands on the helm, and thine eye on the compass, 
and let the wild waves rage as they will. Seek first 



NO CONTRARIETY 8l 

the one great purpose for which thou art, and all 
things else shall be added unto thee.' " 



III 



It is sometimes asked whether the doctrine of a 
special Providence does not threaten the moral 
well-being of man himself with serious dangers. 
For instance, is it not likely to encourage a dreamy, 
listless way of waiting upon events, instead of 
nerving men to active exertion ? Is it not suited to 
the life of an Oriental mystic rather than, for in- 
stance, to the busy life of American farmers, who 
know that they must exert themselves if they would 
live? No. Like other teaching, no doubt it may 
be abused; but between honest, and even eager, 
attention to business and a sincere recognition of 
God's Providence there is no necessary contrariety. 
In our own times, as of old, there are many men 
whose lives show how perfectly compatible is a 
childlike faith in God's Providence with uninter- 
rupted exertion; nay, rather how that faith is the 
very spirit and nerve of this exertion. God does 
not promise us each and all that if we will lie down 
by the brook Carith like Elias the Thesbite, the 
ravens shall come to feed us; as the proverb says, 
He helps them that help themselves ; but then it is 
He who does help them, and that so materially that 
they could not do without Him. He kindles the 



&2 HOW WE MUST TRUST HIM 

brain, He nerves the arm, He sustains, through the 
weary hours of work, the various powers of mind 
and body; and the product, in one sense due to 
human exertion, is in a higher and true sense His 
gift through it. Between our Lord's teaching and 
such exertion undertaken on the principle of duty, 
there is no opposition. Our Lord is merely 
opposing an overanxiety about the results of work, 
which is often as fatal to successful labor itself as it 
is to the claims upon the soul's attention of the king- 
dom of God and His righteousness. 

Let us then ever trust in God and pray to Him as 
though everything depended on Him; let us work 
and wrestle as though everything depended on us. 



CHAPTER IX 

IN THE WILDERNESS 



In the beginning of His public! career, when 
Jesus had fasted forty days and forty nights in the 
wilderness, He felt hungry. So the tempter came 
up and said to Him: "If thou be the Son of God, 
command that these stones be made bread." But 
Jesus answered: "It is written, Man is not to live 
on bread alone, but on every word that issues from 
the mouth of God." 

We transcribe this episode because of the two- 
fold lesson therein given us by our Lord. First, 
from the very words of Jesus we see that, although 
bread is necessary for the sustenance of our body, 
it is not sufficient. Our soul also has to be fed: 
she is hungry for truth, justice, charity, and it is in 
the granary of the Holy Scriptures and of Tradition 
as entrusted by God to His Church that she can find 
such food. The second lesson comes from the very 
refusal of Jesus to lift up His divine hand for an 
unnecessary purpose. Christ showered His mira- 
cles on those who were lowly and righteous, on 

83 



84 THE LAW OF HIS WHOLE LIFE 

those who showed their misery to Him and 
appealed to His All-Goodness and His All-Power. 
But He never performed one single "sign" to sat- 
isfy mere curiosity. Nor did Christ ever perform a 
miracle for His own needs : He who made the 
water wine, could have made the stones bread; but 
to that He was solicited by the need of others, to 
this only by His own. And this abstinence of 
self-help was the law of His whole life, a life as 
wonderful in the miracles which it left undone as 
in those which it wrought. 



II 



In the last year of His public life Jesus went again 
into the wilderness. He was surrounded by a great 
multitude of men, who had brought all the sick 
who could be carried, or who could come; and as 
He passed through the crowds He healed them by 
a word or a touch. They had greater wants, how- 
ever, than bodily healing, and He could not let them 
go away uncomforted. Ascending the hill-side, 
and gathering the vast throng before Him, "He 
spoke to them of the kingdom of God, and taught 
them many things." 

The day was spent in this arduous labor, but the 
people still lingered. They had been fed with the 
bread of truth, and seemed indifferent, for the 
time, to anything besides. Poor shepherdless sheep ! 



THEY MIGHT FAINT BY THE WAY 85 

It was His delight, as the Good Shepherd, to lead 
them to rich pastures, and as they sat and stood 
around Him, they forgot their bodily wants in the 
beauty and power of His words. 

"It was now towards evening and the company 
showed no signs of dispersing. Food could not be 
had in that lonely place, and the Twelve, afraid on 
this and perhaps other grounds, anxiously urged 
Jesus to send them away, that they might buy bread 
in the country round. To their astonishment, how- 
ever, He told them they must themselves supply 
food, as it would never do to dismiss them hungry : 
they might faint by the way. No more impos- 
sible request could have been made. About two 
hundred dollars worth of bread, at the value of 
money in those days, would be needed to give each 
even an insufficient share. They could not under- 
stand Him. Andrew, perhaps the provider for the 
band, could only demonstrate their helplessness by 
saying that the lad in attendance on them had only 
five loaves of common barley bread — the food of 
the poor — and two small fishes, but what, he added, 
were they among so many? 

"Make the men sit down," said Jesus. It was 
Nisan( April), the month of flowers, and the slopes 
were rich with the soft green of the spring grass — 
that simplest and most touching lesson of the care 
of God for all nature. The Twelve presently di- 
vided the vast multitude into companies of fifties 



86 A MIRACLE 

and hundreds, reminding S. Peter, long after, from 
the bright color of their Eastern dresses, of the 
flower-beds of a great garden. 

"This done, like the great Father of the far- 
stretching household, Jesus took the bread and the 
fishes, and looking up to Heaven, invoked the bless- 
ing of God on them, and giving thanks for them, as 
was customary before all meals, proceeded to hand 
portions to the disciples, who, in turn, gave them to 
the crowd. Thus Christ, from three loaves and 
two small fishes, not only satisfied the hunger of 
five thousand men, besides women and children, but 
did it so royally that the fragments that remained 
were enough to fill twelve of the little baskets in 
which Passover pilgrims were wont to carry their 
provisions for the way. More was left than there 
had been at first. 

w< Jesus had thus supplied the wants of the needy 
in a way the full significance of which was as yet 
beyond what the disciples either understood or 
dreamed, for He had shown how there dwelt in Him 
a virtue sufficient to meet all higher wants, as well as 
the lower, so that none who believed in Him would 
ever have either hunger or thirst of soul any 
longer, but would find in Him their all. Had they 
known it, He had shown them that He Himself was 
the Bread of Life, that came down from Heaven. 
But they at least knew how much they came short 
of a lofty faith, which in loving trust, despairs least 



SYMBOL OF THE EUCHARIST 87 

when the need is greatest, and in the strength of 
which all is doubled by joyful imparting, while 
abundance remains instead of want." 

This miraculous bread, symbol of the Holy 
Eucharist, recalls an incident in the life of Israel, 
which it is meet to mention. 

With the help of God the Hebrews had crossed 
the Red Sea and entered the wilderness of Sur: 
"Let us sing unto the Lord," they exclaimed, "for He 
has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider 
He has thrown into the sea. The depths have 
covered them: they are sunk to the bottom like a 
stone." 

But, alas! how quickly do their groans of com- 
plaint follow their hymn of gratitude! Straight- 
way we read in the Bible that the children of Israel 
murmured against Moses and Aaron, their leaders : 
"Would to God that we had died by the hand of 
Jehovah," they cried out, "in the land of Egypt, 
where we sat by the flesh-pots, where we did eat 
bread to the full: for you have brought us forth 
into the wilderness to kill the whole assembly with 
hunger." 

God did not punish them. Once more He for- 
gave them and had pity on them. He said to them, 
through Moses, that He would rain bread for them, 
and they would see the glory of the Lord. "And 
in the morning the dew lay round about the camp, 



88 THE MANNA 

and when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, 
upon the face of the wilderness a small round thing, 
small as the hoar-frost on the ground. And when 
the children saw it, they said one to another, what 
is it? for they knew not what it was. And Moses 
said unto them, It is the bread which Jehovah hath 
given you to eat." 

Strengthened by this food (manna) they went on 
and on. Every morning they gathered it as a food 
for the day, until they reached the Promised Land. 

As the Father, so the Son with the Holy Ghost. 
God has ever pity on humanity. In the heart of 
God, unweary and unweariable, lies an eternal com- 
miseration for us. "Come to me all ye who are 
laboring and burdened, and I will refresh you." 
Thus has the Divine Spokesman and the Living 
Word issued His call to us all, because He knew 
there was in His soul love enough to comfort, light 
enough to enlighten, strength enough to help all 
those who are threatened and tormented by doubt, 
despondence and despair. 

O my farmers, with that childlike confidence 
which is both the bud and blossom of our belief, let 
us ever approach Jesus, the Divine Friend who 
stays with us when all others forsake us, the Friend 
who has both the desire and the power to help us. 
Your hunger and thirst of soul and body He will 
ever satisfy. Your crops He will ever bless. He is 



ALL-GOOD AND ALL-MIGHTY 89 

the All-Good as well as the All-Mighty: "even the 
desert land He will make as a place of pleasure, and 
as the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness shall 
be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of 
praise." 



CHAPTER X 

DOVES AND SERPENTS 



"Be ye wise as serpents and simple like doves." 
Such are the words of our Lord which we cull again 
from that inexhaustible store-house of wisdom and 
simplicity, the Sermon on the Mount. 

Of all the feathery denizens of the mid-air the 
dove has perhaps been given the best part. Gentle 
and graceful, with her delicate forms and her pretty 
plumage, she seems made to be a harbinger between 
heaven and earth. She cuts speedily through the 
air, and in those trackless fields of space she knows 
how to hover as perfectly as an eagle. She can be 
tamed easily and she then becomes the pet bird of 
the farm. Children play with her and caress her. 
Timid however and trembling, she takes flight at the 
least noise and flying away she goes for calm and 
peace in higher regions. Soon she comes down 
again, she stays here a while on the top of a rock 
or of a tree, or comes to dip her wings in the clear 
water of a brook or a creek. Her song has nothing 
of those fanciful melodies which we admire in other 

90 



INNOCENCE AND SIMPLICITY 91 

birds and which cheer up the fields of nature, but 
her cooing, half celestial and half earthly, with its 
low, long note, is not without a charm of its own, 
and the nameless things that sigh within us answer 
to her plaintive and affectionate ring. 

Because of her appealing qualities she has been 
chosen as the symbol of the spirit of gentleness, 
innocence, simplicity, candor, holiness that soars 
above, and charity that labors here below. 

Holy Writ mentions the dove in many a passage. 
She announces the end of the deluge to Noe when 
she returns to him in the evening "carrying a bough 
of an olive tree, with green leaves, in her mouth ;" 
she is the tiny victim offered in the Temple for their 
purification by the mothers that are poor; therefore 
was she the victim offered by the Blessed Virgin 
Mary; luminous she descends on the head of the 
baptized Messiah in the holy stream of Jordan. 

What more shall I say or sing of her? She 
loves the light of day, she flies straight to the object 
she has in view, she is trustful, she is patient, so 
patient that I have seen a sparrow pick food from 
her bill, and there she was, using neither beak nor 
her claws to avenge herself. She prefers to be the 
anvil rather than the hammer, the spoiled rather than 
the robber, the slain rather than the murderer, the 
martyr rather than the tyrant. Do what you want, 
she says, but it is better to be good and simple than 
curious, malicious, and cunning, and there is such 



92 A DEFINITION 

a thing as the duty of allowing our goods to be 
taken from us, rather than defend our rights when 
evil may result therefrom, knowing that a better 
inheritance is reserved for us. Verily this dove is 
an eloquent preacher of Christian simplicity. 
And no wonder that our Lord tells us to be "simple 
as doves' ' who also told us that "unless we become as 
little children we shall not enter the kingdom of 
heaven." 

But what is Christian simplicity? 

Faber says that it is truthfulness with our- 
selves, with our neighbor, and with God. St. Fran- 
cis de Sales calls it sincerity in language and man- 
ners. Blanlo speaks of it as a holy disposition of 
the soul tending to unity, and shunning all duplicity 
in intention, affection, word, and action. Others 
tell us that it is a freedom from elaborateness, 
ornaments, formality, artfulness, cunning, affecta- 
tion or pretension, and ostentation. But the sim- 
plest definition is that which I heard from a little 
Kentucky girl: "Simplicity," she said, "is simpli- 
city," thereby telling me that it is better to practice 
it than to know its definition. 

The ways of simplicity indeed we may learn from 
glancing at the souls of small children as we know 
them. Simple in their beliefs and their judgments, 
they willingly defer to the opinions of others, and 
never hotly maintain their own. It is thus that a 
follower of Christ must prefer the judgment of 



SINCERITY 93 

others to his own and ingenuously confess his error 
as soon as he recognizes it. With still greater 
reason he adheres simply to the truth of faith : the 
feeling of his own ignorance disposes him to be- 
lieve; his is truly the faith of the peasant. Simple 
in his conduct a child avoids disguise and false- 
hood ; he does not know what it is to be annoyed at 
a want of consideration, or to be proud at a proof 
of attention; he does not occupy himself with what 
is thought or said of him ; he does not trouble him- 
self about where his mother places him or carries 
him, nor about anything she does to him; he only 
knows how to abandon himself simply to her and to 
allow her to do with him what she pleases, because he 
knows she is — his mother. It is thus that the true 
Christian acts in all things, without dissimulation 
or concealment, without duplicity or artifice, with- 
out falsehood or equivocation. He does not try 
to hide either his ignorance or his faults, or to ex- 
cuse himself when he has failed in his duty, nor to 
show himself to be anything but what he is; and, 
caring little as to what others may say or think of 
him, he goes straight on his way, doing what he 
believes to be his duty. In his exterior he is mod- 
est without being singular; discreet without affec- 
tation; he knows nothing either of extravagance 
in dress, or in food, furniture and amusements. In 
the midst of his social duties, politeness is in his 
case the true expression of charity. In studying 



94 NOT TO APPEAR BUT TO BE 

his way of action, you notice, not only that he wants 
to please, but you are really dear to him ; not that he 
aims at others being pleased with him, but that he 
is pleased with those with whom he comes in 
contact. Again, in the details of his actions, he 
does not seek to show or hide himself, nor to appear 
good, but to be the same in private as in public, at 
home as in the street, — always himself. He fears 
nothing with excess, he desires nothing with passion, 
he is poor without being humiliated, rich or honored 
without esteeming himself any the more for it; he 
knows of nothing low in what is good, nothing little, 
in what is useful, nothing honorable in what is 
un-Christian. A beautiful character this is, and 
you will attain to it in willing the will of God and 
nothing else, in blessing God always for everything 
and in reposing upon Him in the simplicity of 
love. 

Simplicity of love! The whole Bible is studded 
with the proofs of how deeply God loves it. "His 
will is in them that walk sincerely, ,, is an expres- 
sion we find so often that we could call it the burden 
of the divine song. Simplicity in charity, simplicity 
in obedience, simplicity in the fulfillment of the 
duties of our state, simplicity in perseverance, 
simplicity in our relations with one another. 

But now let us consider the serpent. 

Serpents are beasts that have only enemies and 
therefore everywhere run great danger. So they 



PRUDENCE 95 

are very wary, they keep guard over themselves, 
they avoid making noise, they turn around any 
obstacle that they find on their way. They never 
storm a place, they slimily insinuate themselves 
into it. And in all this, in cases of passive resis- 
tance as well as active attack, they follow an instinct 
dictated by prudence. 

In the primeval days of the human race the 
serpent was cursed by God because of his having 
deceived Adam and Eve; and our Lord echoed 
that malediction when He lashed the hypocrite Phar- 
isees by calling them "serpents and offspring of 
vipers." 

Indeed everything is deceptive in those reptiles 
and the very uttering of their name seems to distort 
our lips. 

Seen from near there is no doubt that in many 
instances wonderful are their gorgeous colorings 
and their diversified forms, but they are all in 
some way or other hideous, they are the ugliest 
creatures upon the earth, and the beauteous ones 
look all the more horrible for their very beauty. 

You see them at rest; you would believe them 
doomed to inertia, those snakes of the swamps; 
they have no feet, no fins, no wings. They have no 
exterior members adapted for making progress. 
How can they move? The fact is that thanks to 
the suppleness of their spine, by drawing together 
the ribs on alternate sides, they spring, they leap, 



g6 "the virtue of old folks" 

they bound, they climb, they glide, not merely with 
ease, but with alacrity. 

You see their size, relatively small, and you believe 
they are frail and harmless. But all are more or 
less remarkable for strength and noxiousness. 
Some are sheathed in ball-proof coat of mail 
covered with imbricated scales; others have offen- 
sive power of teeth or muscle which can promptly 
crush a middle-rate beast or man himself to a 
mummy; others eject acrid humors or fetid odors 
most disgustingly vile; and others carry stings and 
poison-bags, and can in a moment inflict on man or 
on any large animal a dangerous or deadly wound. 

"Flee the serpent as Satan," is consequently an 
universal adage, but how shall we conciliate it with 
the saying of Christ: "Be prudent like serpents"? 
Is there not a flagrant contradiction between them ? 
— No, there is not, and easily do they justify each 
other. 

If the serpent is crafty, it behooves us to mis- 
trust his malice, remembering the word of St. Paul: 
"I fear lest, as the serpent seduced Eve by his 
subtility, so your minds should be corrupted, and fall 
from the simplicity which is in Christ. ,, 

But if he is prudent and cautious, why should we 
not imitate this good point of his? 

Prudence is usually "the virtue of old folks," 
but it is a moral virtue only inasmuch as it differs 
from duplicity. It must, therefore, be accompanied 



NOT A WORLDLY WISE VIRTURE 97 

with simplicity. In the Catechism its definition is : 
Prudence is a virtue dictating what, in a particular 
case, is best to be done, to act according to God's 
will. 

When I speak of prudence, I do not mean that 
worldly wise virtue that seems to be at home and 
do its work best in the things of this world of sense 
and time; that knows how to invest money advan- 
tageously, or to make a good match, or to conduct 
a delicate negotiation, or to smooth down a rising 
misunderstanding, or to build up the fortune of a 
family, or to profit adroitly by other men's mistakes. 
Such prudence deserts a party or abandons an 
opinion, we are told, when it shows symptoms of 
becoming unpopular; it makes friends in opposite 
camps and is prepared for contingencies; it knows 
how to disown, how to attach itself, at the critical 
moment; how to take advantage of the tide in 
human affairs which leads to fortune. 

Such prudence is not necessarily dishonest: God 
forbid! But it also is not characteristically dis- 
interested; it is on the look-out for a passing 
advantage; it has, as we say, a constant eye to the 
main chance. "And yet," as Liddon says, "this 
earthly prudence is the degradation and caricature 
of a great and noble virtue. Prudence is in man 
what Providence is in Allmighty God. His 'never- 
failing Providence' as we know, 'ordereth all things 
both in heaven and earth? Nothing takes Him by 



98 DOVE-LIKE AND SERPENT-LIKE 

surprise; nothing places Him at a disadvantage: 
He has foreseen, or rather, He sees all, and is ready 
for the possible as well as the actual. Immeasurable, 
indeed, is the distance between the Infinite Mind and 
ours: but in such measure as man can anticipate 
the future accurately and make due provision for 
it, he reflects in his little sphere the all-embracing 
Providence of God. Only why should this fore- 
sight be exerted only among the things of the world, 
when there is awaiting it so much vaster and 
nobler a field in which to exercise itself? Why 
should it be as true as it indisputably is, that 'the 
children of the world are in their generation more 
prudent than the children of light' ?" 

The ideal will ever consist in knowing how to 
blend the sincerity of childhood with the experience 
of old age, the simplicity of the dove with the 
prudence of the serpent. Let us be simple enough 
never to deceive others; prudent enough not to let 
ourselves be deceived by others, or misled by our 
own opinions. 

Cowper said it well : 

"That thou mayest injure no man, dove-like be ; 
And serpent-like, that none may injure thee." 



CHAPTER XI 

TREES 

I think that I shall never see 
A poem lovely as a tree. 
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest 
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast; 
A tree that looks at God all day, 
And lifts her leafy arms to pray; 
A tree that may in Summer wear 
A nest of robins in her hair; 
Who intimately lives with rain. 
Upon whose bosom snow has lain; 
Poems are made by fools like me, 
But only God can make a tree. 

Joyce Kilmer. 

Several times, the vine, the fig tree, the mustard- 
shrub, the reed, etc., are mentioned by our Lord. 
It was His habit, whether speaking intimately with 
His Disciples, or addressing the crowd, to draw His 
comparisons from the field of nature. Although 
He ever had all men in view, it seems that His words 
were specially for country people, so fond was He 
in His Divine teaching to use expressions employed 

99 



ioo"by their fruits you shall know them" 



by farmers. A sower or a shepherd noticed along 
the mud road, a herd of cattle thick-nibbling through 
the clovered vale, a wheat field expanding its use- 
ful beauty, a bird, a gnat or a chicken suggested 
to Him images appropriate to engrave lessons into 
the mind of His hearers. 

St. John the Baptist, when pointing out the 
necessity of bringing fruits worthy of penance, had 
spoken of the axe laid to the root of the trees : when 
He wants to ward off His Apostles from the hypo- 
crite Pharisees whose heartless religion is but a 
mask Jesus also says to them: "Beware of false 
prophets. By their fruits you shall know them. 
Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ? 
Even so every good tree yieldeth good fruit, and 
the bad tree yieldeth bad fruit. A good tree can- 
not yield bad fruit; neither can a bad tree yield 
good fruit. Every tree that yieldeth not good fruit, 
shall be cut down, and shall be cast into the fire. 
Wherefore, by their fruits you shall know them." 

Later on, on the very road to Calvary, a few 
hours before His death, seeing some women who 
cried out and Sewailed Him, Jesus said to them: 
"Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for Me but for 
yourselves and for your children! For there are 
days coming when the cry will be 'Blessed are the 
barren, the wombs that never have borne, and the 
breasts that never have suckled V Then will people 
say to the mountains, 'f ajl on us !' and to the hills, 



"the bruised reed he never broke" ioi 

'Cover us.' For if this is what they do when the 
wood is green, what will they do when the wood is 
dry?" He meant this: if the wood rich with sap 
and hope is thus pitilessly thrown into the fire, how 
much more so will they burn the wood which is 
lifeless and therefore holds no promise of flowers 
and fruits; if the Son of man sprinkled with waters 
of grace, nay, more, if the Son of God is thus 
condemned to death because He has become the 
ransom of mankind, what will become of the poor 
Christian who, despising his baptism, through sin 
gives himself to Satan and rejects the divine life that 
is in him? Or again: if in the fulfilment of God's 
purposes the Holy and the Innocent must suffer 
thus — if the green tree be thus blasted — how shall 
the dry tree of a wicked life, with its abominable 
branches, be consumed in the uttermost burning? 

John the Baptist was not "one of those reeds 
shaken with the wind." He was stabbed with the 
sword; but on that night of the Herodian revel, 
standing up for the truth of God, death found him, 
standing up and crying out: "It is not lawful for 
thee to have thy brother's wife." 

Jesus not one moment quailed before the menace 
of men, but Master of Himself and of all elements, 
with His mission of justice He united a mission of 
peace and love : ever kind and condescending, tender 
and patient, ever merciful, "the bruised reed He 



102 NEAR THE FIG TREE 

never broke and the smouldering fire He never put 
out." 

In the red hours of His Passion, His murderers 
plaiting a crown of thorns will set it upon His head 
and will put a reed in His right hand and will bow 
the knee before Him in mockery. The acanthine 
crown will be His only crown on earth, and the reed 
His only sceptre. 

But this is not the time to deal with those mourn- 
ful events. I pass them over and I merely point 
out the parable of the mustard seed, symbol of the 
Church Catholic which the Christ was to found: 
"The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard 
seed which a man takes and sows in his field. It 
is less than any seed on earth, but when it grows 
up it is larger than any plant, it becomes a tree, 
so large that the wild birds come and roost in its 
branches. ,, 

Near the fig tree and the vine we will tarry a 
while longer. 

Twice, in a parable and in a miracle Jesus used 
the fig tree to teach us a divine lesson. 

"A man/' He said, "had a fig tree planted in 
his vineyard; he came in search of fruit on it but 
he found none. So he said to the vinedresser 
'Here have I come for three years in search of fruit 
on the fig tree without finding any; cut it down, 



AN, IMAGE OF MAN IO3 

why should it take up space?' But the man replied : 
'Leave it for this year, Sir, till I dig round about it 
and put in manure. Then it may bear fruit next 
year. If not you can cut it down/ " 

From several viewpoints a fig tree is the image 
of man. Alone of all fruit trees it never shows its 
flowers which remain concealed with the succeeding 
nutlets or seeds in the cavity of hollow stalk. The 
fig tree therefore is every one of us, since our inten- 
tions which must blossom and ripen into acts are 
hidden in the secrecy of our heart, our works only 
being visible. 

Our Lord said it elsewhere: "I have chosen 
you that you should bring forth fruits." These 
fruits are the good deeds which we perform, the 
virtues we practice, the temptations we reject, the 
charitable words we utter, the good example we 
give, the works of spiritual and corporal mercy we 
accomplish, the fervent prayers which ascend from 
our heart towards the Heart of God. But how 
often, alas ! in spite of appealing calls of the Lord we 
become as fruitless as the fig tree of the Gospel. 
God has placed us in His own vineyard — the 
Church; He has flooded us with His love, covered 
us with His grace, guarded us against the dangers 
from within and the trials from without. He has 
indeed the right to expect fruits from us, but when 
for many weary months and years He has vainly 
waited for them, how can we be surprised if He 



104 HE TARRIES IN HIS PATIENCE 

complains of our carelessness and threatens to 
punish our sluggishness? Many pagans would 
have become great saints if they had received even 
only a small portion of the grace which has come 
to us from heaven ! Many heretics would work for 
the glory of God and the uplift of their brethren if 
they had been enlightened, sustained, encouraged 
as we were. And, pray, do not say that the means 
are not always at hand. There is no Christian soul, 
no matter how lowly, that has not the right, nay, 
the duty, to beg for God's help and mercy, none 
that cannot rise again and again through the means 
of Penance, none that cannot find again and always 
strength and energy through the means of Holy 
Communion. No doubt, seeing how worthless and 
wicked we are, God could condemn us to-day to 
death. But He tarries in His patience because 
His Son, the Vinedresser, intercedes for us. 
Blessed are we if, moved by these new favors and 
grateful for the granted respite, we resolutely start 
to work, and make up for the wasted time. 

The Gospel does not say what became of the fig 
tree when the vinedresser's request having been 
granted, he dug about it and dung it. But here is 
what happened on another day, on Monday in Pas- 
sion week. 

Jesus was going from Bethania to Jerusalem with 
His Disciples while it was still early; and on the 
way He felt hungry. It may be that in His com- 



HOPELESSLY BARREN T05 

passionate eagerness to teach His people, He had 
neglected the common wants of life; it may be that 
there were no means of procuring food in the fields 
where He had spent the night. But whatever may 
have been the cause, Jesus hungered, so as to be 
driven to look for wayside fruit to sustain and 
refresh Him for the day's work. 

"At a distance in front of Him, Jesus caught 
sight of a solitary fig tree, and although the ordinary 
season at which figs ripened had not yet arrived, 
yet, as it was clad with verdure, and as the fruit of a 
fig sets before the leaves unfold, this tree looked 
more than usually promising. Its rich large leaves 
seemed to show that it was fruitful, and their un- 
usually early growth that it was not only fruitful 
but precociously vigorous. But when He came up 
to it, He was disappointed. The sap was cir- 
culating; the leaves made a fair show; but of fruit 
there was none. Fit emblem of a hypocrite whose 
external semblance is a delusion and sham, — fit 
emblem of the nation in whom the ostentatious 
profession of religion brought forth no "fruit of 
good living'' — the tree was barren. And it was 
hopelessly barren; for had it been fruitful the 
previous year, there would still have been some of 
the autumn figs hidden under those broad leaves; 
and had it been fruitful this year, the spring figs 
would have set into green and delicious fragrance 
before the leaves appeared; but on this fruitless 



106 THREE ETERNAL LESSONS 

tree there was neither any promise for the future, 
nor any gleanings from the past. And therefore 
since it was but deceptive and useless, a barren 
cumberer of the ground, He made it the eternal 
warning against a life of hypocrisy continued until 
it is too late, and, in the hearing of His Disciples, 
uttered upon it the solemn fiat, "Never fruit grow 
upon thee more!" Even at the word, such in- 
fructuous life as it possessed was arrested, and it 
began to wither away. 

"At first glance, the severity of Jesus may seem 
strange — and indeed this is the only occasion when 
He used His destructive power on earth — but He 
was the Master, — to Him all the trees of the world 
would be too little for a burnt-offering — and the 
reason of His act was that He desired to impress 
three eternal lessons upon His Disciples and upon 
us: a symbol of the destruction of impenitence, a 
warning of the peril of hypocrisy, an illustration 
of the power of faith. And to say it by the way, 
even this incident was prophesied through Ezechiel 
where we read : 'All the trees of the country shall 
know that I the Lord have brought down the high 
tree, and exalted the low tree, and have dried up the 
green tree.' 

"On the following morning Jesus who had spent 
the night outside Jerusalem, rose with His Apostles 
to enter for the last time the Courts of the Temple. 
On their way they passed the solitary fig tree, no 



"have the faith of god" 107 

longer gay with its false, leafy garniture, but 
shrivelled from the root upwards, in every bough. 
The quick eye of Peter was the first to notice it 
and he exclaimed, "Master, behold the fig tree 
which thou didst curse, is withered away." The 
Disciples stopped to look at it, and to express their 
astonishment at the rapidity with which the de- 
nunciation had been fulfilled. Jesus told them that 
if they would but have faith in God, unwavering, 
unstaggering faith, they should not only be able to 
perform such a wonder as done to the fig tree, but 
even greater than this." 

But since in this one instance the power had been 
put forth to destroy, He added an important warn- 
ing. They were not to suppose that this emblematic 
act gave them any licence to wield the sacred powers 
which faith and prayer would bestow on them, 
for purposes of anger or revenge; nay, no power 
was possible to the heart that knew not how to for- 
give, and the unforgiving heart could never be for- 
given. The secret of successful prayer was faith; 
the road to faith in God lay through pardon of 
offences. Here are the very words of Jesus as 
recorded by St. Mark. I re-echo them because they 
are the charter of faith and forgiveness: "Have 
the faith of God. Amen, I say to you, that who- 
soever shall say to this mountain, Be thou removed 
and cast into the sea, and shall not stagger in his 
heart, but believe that whatsoever he saith shall be 



I08 I AM THE TRUE VINE" 

done: it shall be done unto him. Therefore I say 
unto you, all things whatsoever you ask when ye 
pray, believe that you shall receive: and they shall 
come unto you. And when you shall stand to pray : 
forgive if you have aught against any man, that 
your Father also who is in heaven, may forgive you 
your sins. But if you will not forgive, neither will 
your Father that is in heaven, forgive you your 
sins." 

'Twas on the night before He died, a few 
moments after the Last Supper, a few hours before 
His being betrayed by Judas. 

Jesus went forth to Gethsemani, and crossing 
the vineyards which He had so often compared to 
the kingdom of heaven He said to His Disciples: 
"I am the true Vine and My Father is the Husband- 
man. Every branch in Me not bearing fruit He 
will lop it off : and every one bearing fruit He will 
prune it that it may bear more fruit. Abide in Me, 
and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of 
itself, unless it abide in the vine, so neither can you, 
unless you abide in Me. I am the Vine; you the 
branches : he that abideth in Me, and I in him, the 
same beareth fruit, for apart from Me you can do 
nothing. If anyone abide not in Me, he will be 
lopped off like the branch which withereth, and they 
will gather it up, and cast it into the fire, and it is 
burnt up." 



OUR WOES ARE WINGS IO9 

How perfectly the Disciples understood these 
words, and lived and died united to their Lord, we 
all know. But we must do as they did. We must 
strive to remain united to Jesus, the head of the 
mystical body, whose members we are. Without 
Him, apart from Him, we can acquire no merit for 
heaven. Let us then keep preciously in our hearts 
the grace of God that was inserted into us on the 
day of our baptism which made us the children 
of the Father, enriched and enlarged on the day of 
our first Communion which was the day of our fel- 
lowship with Jesus, enriched and strengthened on 
the day of our Confirmation which was the day of 
our Communion with the Holy Ghost. 

Let us meditate also on the helpful role of suffer- 
ing. Pain is to us the pruning of the vine. No 
pain, no gain. "They that sow in tears shall reap 
in joy." "As you are partakers of the sufferings, 
so shall you be also of the consolation/' Through 
the cross to the light. Through sorrow to the stars. 
The tree of the cross is ever redolent with a balm 
most sweet. Our woes are wings that carry us 
heavenwards. 

Let us remember that our self-interest demands 
that we never leave unproductive any of the branches 
of our vine, — any of our God-given faculties. 
Even as the vine is not cultivated for the sake of 
its shade, not for its flowers, nor for its wood, but 
for its grapes, so are we not placed and planted 



110 THE REST IS VANITY 

here below for the purpose of making money and 
getting honors and pleasures, but merely to bear 
fruits for eternal life. The rest is vanity. 

The Lord said to Ezechiel : "Son of man, of what 
use to thee is the wood of the vine tree? Canst 
thou make any work of it? Shall a pin be made of 
it to hang any vessel thereon? Behold, it is meet 
for no work but to be cast into the fire for fuel." 
O my friends, let us not be the branches of the 
vine, merely meet for fuel, but let us bear the fruits 
of living faith, strong hope, and warm love of 
God and man. 



CHAPTER XII 

ABOUT ANIMALS 

"I am so glad He loved the common things, 
The drowsy chicks beneath their mother's wings; 

The sparrows and their brothers of the air, 
Content to look to heaven for food and care. 

He loved to stray by woods and singing rills, 
Companion of the stars and solemn hills. 

The. 5 things are written on the sacred page, 
A star to simple folks from age to age. 

And as the glowing words of love we scan, 
We feel His kinship to the heart of man." 

When we went to the Stable of Bethlehem to 
adore our Divine Savior, we saw an ox and an ass 
near the Crib of the Child. 

During His fast of forty days, Jesus was in the 
company of wild beasts, while angels ministered 
to Him. 

During the three years of His public life it hap- 
pened at times that He was so poor as to have no 

place to lay His head. Reduced to such stern dr- 
ill 



112 AS LAMBS AMONG WOLVES 

cumstances, He likened Himself to the foxes, who 
at least have their holes. 

In the hour of His transitory triumph on Palm 
Sunday it -was upon the foal of an ass that He 
entered Jerusalem in the midst of an enthusiastic 
crowd. Men and women then spread out their 
cloaks to tapestry His path, while others cut 
branches from the trees to scatter them before Him. 
And the joyous strain of hosannas rose high in the 
heavens : 

"Hosanna to the Son of David ! 
Blessed be He who comes in the Name of the Lord ! 
Hosanna in the Highest !" 

And the Apostles recalled in after days that this 
fulfilled the prophecy of Zacharias: "Rejoice 
greatly, O daughter of Sion; shout, O daughter of 
Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee; He 
is meek and having salvation ; lowly and riding upon 
an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an ass." 

Not upon a war-horse did Christ ride, but on 
that lowly beast which was the symbol of peace. 
Simplicity is always the key-note of His acts. His 
Disciples He sometimes compares to defenceless 
and guileless lambs: "Behold, I send you as lambs 
among wolves." He tells them, "to beware of 
false prophets who come to you in the clothing of 



UNDER HER WINGS 113 

sheep but inwardly are ravening wolves/ ' He tells 
Peter "to feed His lambs and feed His sheep." 

As for Him He is "the hen gathering her chickens 
under her wings." It was only in a cursory way 
that He used this strange and simple comparison, but 
as it was during a moment of deepest emotion that 
He had recourse to this charming image we will 
tarry a while before it. 

Towards the very end of His life on earth, after 
having hurled at the Scribes and Pharisees those 
maledictions which are the woeful counterpart of 
the heavenly Beatitudes, His thought and His heart 
turned towards the Holy City so tenderly loved by 
Him and so soon to be guilty of the greatest of all 
crimes. And He wept over it! 

"O Jerusalem! Jerusalem!" He cried, in a loud 
voice trembling with sadness, "thou that killest the 
prophets and stonest those whom God sends unto 
thee! Thou art still true to thine evil repute! 
How often would I have gathered together thy 
children as the hen doth gather her chickens under 
her wings. But thou wouldst not!" 

Jesus, stooping to compare His vigilant and de- 
voted love for us poor sinners, to the touching 
attention of a hen for her chicks! What an ad- 
mirable lesson! 

I suppose that all the creatures of God manifest 
for their offspring a certain tenderness blended with 



114 FROM MY WINDOW 

care and anxiety. But is not the hen in the very 
first rank of them all? While I am writing this 
page, I can see a hen from my window. Come 
and hear how her voice is raucous and tremulous, 
see how her feathers bristle up, see how her wings 
enfold and extend themselves to offer a ready shel- 
ter to her chicks : it is going to rain, and she is very 
uneasy, she is apprehensive of every step — and how 
she clucks, clucks, clucks to her chicks now that she 
has found a dainty morsel of cabbage. But listen 
again, the scene changes : 

"Says the first little chicken, 

With a queer little squirm: 
'I wish I could find 

A fat little worm!' 

"Says the next little chicken 

With a small sigh of grief: 
'I wish I could find 

A green little leaf !' 

"Says the third little chicken 

With a faint little moan: 
'I wish I could find 

A small gravel stone/ 

'Now, see here/ says the mother 
From the green garden patch ; 

'If you want any breakfast, 
Just come here and scratch !' M 



THAT PATCH OF POTATOES 115 

But no, this is only pseudo-poetry. The truth 
of the matter is that the hen is going to scratch and 
to tear up that patch of potatoes; at least I am 
afraid that she will. At all events you can see that 
she is a good mother and a good provider. 

And what of her devotion? She forgets her- 
self, she is willing to sacrifice her whole being for 
her little ones. Not one moment does she stop 
"thinking" of their welfare and their safety. Her 
whole life is wrapped up with them. Let an enemy 
appear, and she displays such a surprising courage 
that Lincoln could say: "If you have never seen a 
hen defend her chicks, then you have no idea of what 
heroism is." 

While she is not a mother, she is shy and scary, 
and she is very awkward and unwieldy. But when 
the hatching is done and the brood is there, see how 
she is changed. She watches over them with a vig- 
ilance that nothing can weary and a steadfastness 
that nothing can disconcert. At the least sign of 
danger she clucks, clucks, to get them under her 
wings. For them she is ready to accept the battle 
with man or beast. Unhesitatingly she stands 
athwart the path of danger. A man who would 
display the tenth part of the heroic devotedness the 
hen has for her progeny should hold a place of 
honor during life, and have his statue near the 
court-house of his native county-seat after death. 

Tender love and protecting care, heroic courage ; 



Il6 NEAR HIM 

it is enough to read the life of our Divine Savior, or 
to sum up in our mind all that we owe to Him since 
our baptism and our first communion, to acknowl- 
edge that such are always the sentiments of Jesus 
towards us. 

Let us not act like the unhappy Jews of Jerusa- 
lem: let us go to Him, in the hour of joy as in 
that of sadness, when we need light, strength, and 
consolation. Let us go to Him with confidence 
and love. It is so good to nestle near His Heart 
and before His eyes! No enemy will ever dare 
attack us in that fortress of love. Doubt, temp- 
tations, anguish will be swept away as soon as we 
are near Him. 

During the night of the Passion the cock gives us 
a lesson of self -vigilance. 

"This night," Jesus said to St. Peter, "before 
the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice." 

Needless to describe the scenes of the Apostle's 
profession of fidelity, his denial before the break 
of day, his bitter tears of a whole life-time, but let 
the song of the cock be a warning that we must 
not trust ourselves, that we must pray for help, 
that we must repent for our sins, and that we must 
be ever on our guard "for the lord of the house 
cometh whether at even, or at midnight, or at cock- 
crowing, or in the morning." 



STRAINING OUT THE GNAT II7 

In another page of the Scriptures Jesus calls 
the Pharisees "blind guides who strain out the gnat 
and swallow the camel." Why such a connection 
between the smallest of all living things, and the 
camel, the largest of the animals with which the 
Hebrew mind was familiar? Well, if we remem- 
ber that in Palestine, wine, water, milk or any bev- 
erage was strained or filtered, before drinking it, 
lest a fly or a gnat might have fallen into it and 
made it unclean," the language of our Lord be- 
comes clear, although figurative. The straining 
out of the gnat is the close attention to the minute 
details of externalism, such as for instance, the 
Pharisaic command not to kill a louse on the Sab- 
bath. The swallowing of the camel is their vio- 
lation of the great principles of the worship of 
God in spirit, of justice, of truth and of mercy. 

Some scrupulous people there are who would never 
dare miss a certain vocal prayer which they are in 
the habit of saying every day, — and it is very well 
— but feel no pang of conscience in speaking against 
their neighbor and even against their pastor — and 
it is very bad. They will never steal a penny but 
they do not pay their debts. They will never pluck 
an ear of corn in the field but they will filch from 
you your good name. They will never play 
baseball on Sunday but they will condone divorce 
and its accessories. They pray to God for tern- 



Il8 THE MITE AND THE BEAM 

poral favors but they never ask for the spiritual 
ones. They seek for the things that should be 
added unto them, but they seek not the Kingdom 
of God and His righteousness. They strain out 
the gnat; they make much of the tiny offence that 
they have received from others; and they consider 
as nothing the unkind remarks that they have in- 
jected against others. They see the mite that is 
in their brother's eye but consider not the beam in 
their own eye. They strain out the gnat and swal- 
low the camel. 

With the rich people who loved their riches — the 
rich who were not poor in spirit — -Jesus' lan- 
guage is not less enigmatic than with the Pharisees. 
He says to them that "it is easier for a camel to pass 
through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to 
enter into the Kingdom of God." 

Many explanations have been embroidered on! 
this text. Long ago Cyril of Alexandria, to solve 
the difficulty, claimed that the Gree'k word kamelos 
camel, ought to be changed into kamdlos, rope or 
cable. But the words of the Lord cannot be mod- 
ified. "Another opinion," says Dr. Breen, "was 
advanced by those who understood by the eye of 
the needle one of the small gates of Jerusalem, 
through which a loaded camel could not pass. But 
it has been clearly proved that no such name was 
ever given to any gate of the Holy City, and the 



"all things are possible with him" 119 

idea is incongruous. No reasonable man would 
thus employ speech. The simile would be clumsy 
and without point. Now these violent theories are 
unnecessary. The Lord simply used one of the pro- 
verbial expressions of His people's language. It is a 
hyperbole, and its character was intended by Jesus 
to add emphasis. Sometimes the elephant was used 
instead of the camel, the shape of the camel's body 
and the awkwardness of its movements make it a fit 
subject for the proverb. Comparisons of such nature 
are not to be taken literally. The intent of the 
Lord was to fix upon the minds of men the idea of 
the great difficulty of serving God in wealth, and 
for this the expression is apt." 

Father Breen may be right, but there are others 
who think that our Lord goes farther than this, 
and means nothing less than that those who love 
their riches and trust exclusively in them cannot 
enter Heaven. St. Paul seems to be of the same 
opinion when he says : "They that desire to be rich 
fall into temptation and a snare, and many foolish 
and hurtful lusts, such as drown men in destruction 
and perdition. For the love of money is the root 
of all evil; which some reaching after have been 
led astray from the faith, and have pierced them- 
selves through with many sorrows." Nay, the 
words of our Lord confirm this, too, for when the 
Apostles said to Him: "who then can be saved ?" 
He simply replied ; "With men it is impossible, but 



120 "neither beggary nor riches" 

not with God, for all things are possible with Him." 
Again, according to Him: "No servant can serve 
two masters; for either he will hate the one and 
love the other ; or he will hold to the one and despise 
the other; you cannot serve God and mammon." 
It is perfectly proper to be rich but let not your 
riches be your god. Ever apposite will be the 
prayer we read in Holy Writ: "Give me neither 
beggary nor riches: give me only the necessaries 
of life : lest perhaps being filled I should be tempted 
to deny and say : Who is the Lord ? or being com- 
pelled to poverty I should steal and forswear the 
Name 'of my God." 

"Give not that which is holy to the dogs," These 
words of our Ltfrd need also to be explained. 
Among the Jews the dog had an evil repute. This 
may be a surprise to us who look upon him as 

"The joy, the solace and the aid of man, 
The rich man's guardian and the poor man's friend, 
The only creature faithful to the end." 

But to the Jews he was "an unclean animal" and 
had to live on offal and carrion. His very name 
was a term of reproach. "Begone, you dogs," 
exclaims St. John in the Apocalypse to those who 
stand not for the Lamb. 

And still in the jterable of the rich man the dog 



THE CRUMBS OF THE CHILDREN 121 

plays a beautiful part. When no human being has 
pity on Lazarus who is lying at the gate, a mass 
of ulcers, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs 
which fall from the rich man's table, the dogs come 
and lick his sores. 

And what of the meeting between Jesus and the 
woman of Syro-Phenicia ? "Have mercy on me, 
O Lord, Thou Son of David; my daughter is 
grievously troubled by a devil." Such was her 
prayer. But to try her faith, or to draw it out, our 
Lord answered not a word. And "His Disciples 
came and besought Him, saying : Send her away for 
she cries after us. And He answering, said : I am 
not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. 
And entering into a house, He would have no one 
know it: but He could not be hid. She came and 
adored Him, saying : Lord, help me. Who replied : 
Let the children first be satisfied ; for it is not good 
to take the bread of the children, and cast it 
to the dogs. But she answered and said to Him: 
Yea, Lord, but even the whelps eat under the table 
of the crumbs of the children, that fall from the 
table of their masters. Then Jesus answering said 
to her: O woman, great is thy faith; be it done 
to thee as thou wilt. For this saying go thy way; 
the devil is gone out of thy daughter. And when 
she was come to her house, she found the girl lying 
upon the bed and the devil was gone out. And 
her daughter was cured from that hour." 



122 A SOURCE OF COMFORT 

The Twelve had learned thereby that even heathen 
"dogs' ' were not to be sent away unheard. But 
to us there is in this history even more than the 
solemn interest of Christ's compassion and mighty 
Messianic working, or the lessons of His teaching. 
We view it in its deeper bearing upon, and lessons 
to all times. To how many, not only of all nations 
and conditions, but in all states of heart and mind, 
nay, in the very lowest depths of conscious guilt 
and alienation from God, must this have brought 
unspeakable comfort, the comfort of truth and the 
comfort of His Teaching. Be it so, an outcast, 
"dog" ; not at the table ; but under the table. Still 
we are at His feet; it is our Master's Table; He 
is our Master ; and as He breaks the children's bread, 
it is of necessity that "the children's crumbs" fall 
to us — enough, quite enough, and to spare. Never 
can we be outside His reach, nor of that of His gra- 
cious care, and of sufficient provision to eternal life. 

But to return to our text. "Give not that which 
is holy to the dogs; neither cast ye your pearls 
before swine, lest perhaps they trample them under 
their feet and turn to gore you." 

Here Jesus meant that the truth of faith must 
not be indiscriminately offered to men utterly un- 
godly and hardened who wilfully would reject it 
with blasphemy and mockery. As said the old 
Hebrew adage, "Give not wisdom to him who knows 
not its value, for it is more precious than pearls, 



THOSE LIVING PEARLS 1 23 

and he who seeks it not, is worse than a swine that 
defiles and rolls himself in the mud; so he who 
knows not the value of wisdom, profanes its glory." 
Charitable we must be but prudent also, for we must 
not put it in their power to dishonor the grace of 
God. Jesus meant also that carefully from those 
corrupt miscreants must be warded off the souls 
of our children — those living pearls bought by Him 
with a great price — lest they get stained at their 
impure contact and be dragged along the filthy road 
that leads to perdition. 

Later on we shall meet the prodigal son, the 
deserter of the farm, reduced to feed swine, who 
would fain fill his belly with the husks the swine 
do eat ; and no man gives unto him. 

But let us come immediately to that unforgettable 
scene where the devil begs from Jesus to be sent 
into a swine. 

Here is St. Matthew's account of it: "Having 
reached the country of the Gerasens, Jesus was met 
by two demoniacs who ran out of the tombs; they 
were so violent that nobody could pass along the 
road there. They shrieked, 'Son of God, what 
have we to do with thee? art thou come hither to 
torment us before the time?' Now, some distance 
away, there was a large drove of swine grazing, 
so the demons begged him saying, 'If thou art to 
cast us out, send us into that drove of swine/ He 
said to them: 'Begone!' So out they came and 



124 STAY WITH US, O MASTER 

went to the swine, and the entire drove rushed down 
the steep slope into the sea and perished in the 
water. The herdsmen fled; they went off to the 
town and reported the whole affair of the demoniacs. 
Then all the town came out to meet Jesus, and when 
they saw Him they begged Him that He would 
depart from their district." 

May this repulsive symbol of moral ugliness and 
of vile appetites warn us never to harbor Satan in 
our hearts! He who took shelter in these animals 
and caused their death, soils all that he touches and 
always brings despair and malediction in his wake. 
And may God guard us from ever uttering the woe- 
ful request of the Gerasens to Jesus. They did not 
ask Him to depart from their district out of a feeling 
of their own unworthiness, as Peter asked Him; but 
they feared greater losses of their temporal goods, 
and did not appreciate the benefit Jesus had be- 
stowed on him from whom He had expelled the de- 
mon. Unlike them let us ever say with the two 
Disciples on Easter morning : Stay with us, O Mas- 
ter, for the day has now declined, and the night of 
pur life is coming. Stay with us, O Master. 

Let us mention the eagles who, "wheresoever the 
body shall be, thither will they also be gathered 
together/' According to some commentators, this 
means that wheresoever corrupted humanity shall 
live, there shall the angels of heaven be employed 



WHAT WE OWE TO THEM 1 2$ 

in separating the just from the sinners. Others tell 
us that wheresoever the glorious body of the Son 
of man shall appear, at His second coming, there 
shall the eagles, that is, the just souls, gather around 
Him and cling unto His standard. Others explain 
that wheresoever the body of the Son of man shall be 
under the Eucharistic species, there shall the eagles, 
the holy souls of the Church, gather, to nourish 
themselves by it. 

Let us also recall the words that encourage us to 
confidence in prayer: "What man is there among 
you, of whom if his son ask for bread, will he reach 
him a stone ? Or ask for a fish, will he reach him 
a serpent for a fish? Or if he shall ask an egg f will 
he reach him a scorpion? If you, then, being evil, 
know how to give good gifts to your children, how 
much more will your Father from heaven give the 
good Spirit to them that ask Him?" 

We will not bring this chapter to a close without 
reminding ourselves of what, speaking after the 
manner of men, we owe to our cattle and all our 
live stock. What a lesson of endeavor and activity, 
kindness, zeal, loyalty, vigilance and faithfulness 
we receive from them if only we have ears to hear. 
How serviceable they are and how uncomplaining! 
Sheep do not refuse to give us their wool, nor 
cows their milk, Dogs lick the hand that has hurt 



126 OUR OLD SERVANTS 

them. Even wild animals teach us to be prudent 
and drill us to patience. And does not the ox, who 
knoweth his owner's voice and footstep, condemn 
us who refuse to hear God speaking to us? 

No doubt, ridiculous exaggeration must be 
avoided, and distasteful, to say the least, it is to see 
city women and men centering their affection on a 
pug dog, a cat or a parrot; we country people do 
not need to hold membership in the Society for the 
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals ; but neither should 
we abuse our old servants or mistreat our old 
friends. 

"We have abused, alas, too often," says Farrar, 
"to purposes of cruelty and tyranny, the empire 
which God granted us over the brutes. It is sad 
that man has thus made even the most beautiful 
and innocent part of the animal creation shun, and 
hate, and fear him. It is not naturally so. In the 
wilderness Jesus was with the wild beasts, and they 
harmed Him not. The timid things of the wilder- 
ness learned to trust the ancient hermits. In the 
desert islands the denizens of the forest and the fell 
shrink not from man until he has shown them his 
deadliness and treachery. The birds, it is said, and 
I can well believe it, fluttered without fear about St. 
Francis of Assisi." For Jesus' sake we have a 
plain duty to the dumb animals, to be considerate to 
them, to be gentle with them, to discourage and to 
abhor all needless cruelty towards them, to teach our 



"be kind to them all" 127 

boys and our ignorant men to be kind to them, to 
determine never 

"To mix our pleasure or our pride with 
Sorrow of the meanest thing that f eels." 

"Be kind to dumb creatures, nor grudge them your 
care, 
God gave them their life and your love they must 

share ; 
And He who the sparrow's fall tenderly heeds 
Will lovingly look on compassionate deeds. 

"The brave are the tender, — then do not refuse 
To carefully cherish the brutes you must use ; 
Make their life's labor sweet, not dreary and sad, 
Their working and serving you, easy and glad. 

"He made them and blessed them, the least are His 

care : 
The swallow that wings her swift flight through the 

air, 
The dog on your hearthstone, the horse in your barn, 
The cow in your pasture, the sheep on your farm." 



CHAPTER XIII 



A DESERTER 



"He left his village and his kin, 
The holy mound, his mother's grave; 
Across the mountains and the wave 
He chose the pagan and his sin. 

"He left the willow and the oak, 
The silent woods of boyhood's balm; 
Beneath the bamboos and the palm 
He chose the jungle and the yoke." 

But let us set poetry aside, for the immortal 
prose of the Gospel alone can pen-picture the subject 
at hand wherein Christ seems to have summed up 
all His words of light, life and love: 

"A man had two sons ; and the younger of them 
said to his father, 'Father, give me my share of 
the property that falls to me.' And he divided the 
estate among them. A few days later the younger 
son got together all he had and went away into a 
distant land, where he squandered his means in 
loose living. After he had spent his all, a severe 
famine set in throughout that land, and he began to 

128 



"your brother has arrived" 129 

be in actual want; so he went and engaged himself 
to a citizen of that land, who sent him to his fields 
to feed swine. And he was fain to satisfy his 
hunger with the pods the swine were eating ; no one 
gave him anything. But when he came to his senses 
he said, "How many hired men of my father have 
more than enough to eat, and here am I perishing 
of hunger ! I will arise and go to my father, and I 
will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against 
heaven and before you ; I do not deserve to be called 
your son any more; only make me like one of your 
hired men/ " So he got up and went off to his father. 
But when he was still far away his father saw him 
and felt pity for him and ran to fall upon his neck 
and kiss him. The son said to him, 'Father, I have 
sinned against heaven and before you; I do not 
deserve to be called your son any more.' 

"But the father said to his servants, 'Quick, bring 
the best robe and put it on him, give him a ring 
for his finger and sandals for his feet, and bring 
the fatted calf, kill it, and let us eat and be merry, 
for this son of mine was dead, and is come to life; 
he was lost and he is found/ 

"So they began to make merry. Now his elder 
son was out in the field, and as he came near the 
house, he heard the music and dancing ; so summon- 
ing one of the servants, he asked what this meant. 
The servant told him, 'Your brother has arrived, 
and your father has killed the fatted calf because he 



130 "and pity 'tis 'tis true" 

has got him back safe and sound/ This angered 
him, and he would not go in. His father came out 
and tried to appease him, but he replied, 'Look at all 
the years I have been serving you! I have never 
neglected any of your orders, and yet you have never 
given me so much as a kid, to let me make merry 
with my friends : but as soon as this son of yours 
arrives, after having wasted your means with 
harlots, you kill the fatted calf for him!' The 
father said to him, 'My son, you and I are always 
together, and all I have is yours. We could not but 
make merry and rejoice, for your brother here was 
dead and has come to life again, he was lost but he 
has been found.' " 

Piteous and heart rending is the story of this 
poor country lad — the prodigal son. " 'Tis true 
'tis pity and pity 'tis 'tis true," his parting from the 
old homestead with his dream of dreams ; the follies 
to which he gives way; the sorrows that stab him; 
his manly resolution when all seems lost; and his 
return homewards. All these details could be made 
to mark the sinful soul's various steps when flying 
away from God, finding in sin only wormwood and 
ashes, and at last coming back into the arms of her 
Father — assuming that He gives her time and grace 
to do so. No doubt it were profitable for us to 
develop this simile and expose the eloquent lessons 
of this parable, but this is not in our program. Our 



WORDS OF WARNING I3I 

task is different. For in reading the story of the 
son who went away, the thought has come to us 
of that tragic drama unknown to our fathers but 
so sadly carried out in these our days : we mean, our 
lads' desertion of the farm, our lads' abandonment 
of their mother — our unfortunate sons who forsake 
the home where they were born, the fruitful fields 
where dwell joy and plenty, and rush into the 
murderous cities which, vampire-like, suck their 
blood and sap their life. And I want to write words 
of warning against such an exodus from the holy 
earth. 

When was it that this young boy felt in his brain, 
or in his heart, the germ of that morbid idea that 
the country was not good enough for him? To 
some the guilty tempter is the school, the school 
which is not sufficiently rural, which teaches how to 
become a salesman in a store or a slave in a shop, but 
has nothing to say of the soul of the soil which we 
love. To others the seducer is the army or the navy. 
I know how necessary to America — and to the whole 
world — our soldiers and our marines are — God bless 
them! — but I also know that once ^one to the 
barracks or to the sea, our boys are usually lost to 
agriculture. As a rule city boys only should be 
invited to enlist, for the country boys are here 
already performing a solemn and urgent patriotic 
duty. Again to others the prompter comes under 



I32 THE SONG OF THE SIREN 

the shape of a distant far-away relative who by his 
glowing and mendacious accounts of sky-high wages 
for his eight-hour work sometimes succeeds in 
snatching and ruining the young tiller of the soil. 
Whatever be the cause and whoever the agent, 
once their decision is taken to break away from the 
village, our sons still hesitate before tearing asunder 
so many ties that bind them to the home, and before 
setting aside those many sympathies more soft than 
silk, more strong than steel, more precious than 
gold that hang around the hearth-stone. Heart 
breaking is the travail of their soul, their soul 

"Wandering between two worlds, one dead, 
The other powerless to be born." 

But at last they speak. And no one can under- 
stand them. No one can believe that such a thing 
can be true. 

But the parents soon notice that they are facing 
an unbreakable will. Besides the known motives 
admitted by the boy, they have a suspicion that there 
are unknown and untold others lurking in his breast. 
And pitifully they look around for advice and for 
help. 

They go to the pastor and to the mayor and to 
the neighbors. But it is too late. Once the 
song of the Siren of the city has bewitched the heart 
of a boy, only a miracle from God could disenthrall 



WHAT USUALLY HAPPENS 1 33 

it from the spell. And the parents at last yield to 
the boy's request. They give him money and reluc- 
tantly let him go. Oh ! the money that the mother 
saved in selling those tomatoes and those pickles 
last fall — the pin money saved for emergency 
purposes — goes to him, too. She hides it in the 
little trunk between two flannel shirts and a woolen 
sweater she has knitted herself — and says nothing 
of it. The only words she can cry out, are : "My 
boy, my boy," when she sees her young bird on the 
edge of the nest trying his wings to fly into the 
world. 

He goes away. And the village has lost two 
good, sinewy arms, and the city once more has 
gained a prodigal son. 

And that night at supper there is a gap at the 
table and the mother puts up her apron and weeps : 
"God, bless him," she whispers, "and bring him 
to us safely back again." 

What usually happens to the boy who has 
answered the call of the city? At first the things he 
sees are fair to the eyes and delightful to behold. 
"The salary is fine and the grub is good," he writes 
in his first letter. When a man is young and is 
thought to have some money, there is not much 
difficulty in getting on and making acquaintances; 
he is pretty sure to be in demand, and, with a silver 
key in his hand, there is not a door but will readily 
open before him while his money lasts. What a 



134 THE DAYS OF SICKNESS 

tingling, novel sensation for this lad in his teens to 
find himself in surroundings where, instead of being 
thwarted and blamed, he is flattered and praised 
and looked upon as a "good fellow"; in place of 
being pulled back, he is pushed on, being told that 
he is all right, and not — what he has so often heard 
— all wrong. "There are always to be found," 
says Father Vaughan, "those who teach that it can- 
not be wrong to do what you like, provided you can 
pay for it." 

But soon he comes to himself; the fumes of the 
city are not fit for him. Little by little his lungs, 
made for the labor and life of the fields, do not act 
with the same regularity now that they do not find in 
the poisoned atmosphere of the factory the pure air 
which gives freshness and vitality to the blood. 
Slowly but surely tuberculosis sets in. 

Come the days of sickness. The co-boarders are 
now very indifferent indeed about that young fellow 
who sleeps next room, 1 and who spits blood, and 
whose disease perhaps is catching. 

x At this writing one of my farmers supplies me with the 
following pen-picture of one of those furnished rooms in 
the city: 

"A dimly lighted hallway, and a stair 

Leading to darker recesses above, 
A furtive glance at those who come and go, 
No hand held out in friendliness or love. 

"One window in the room, facing a court, 
A narrow bed, a cartoon on the wall, 



THE DAYS OF SIN 1 35 

And he will then think of the devoted folk who 
are in the village. Over there never any one is 
abandoned; even strangers are as well taken care 
of as the members of the family. "That's bread 
cast upon the waters : it will return to us," they say ; 
and unstintedly they do their tasks of love. 

But the white plague is not the only evil to which 
our prodigal son is a possible prey. To us Chris- 
tians there are greater than this. Far away from 
known faces and friendly hearts one hesitates less, 
much less, to walk on the way that leads to sin and 
to hell. And as, once one is started on that path, the 
slopes get fast and slippery, one goes down to the 
bottom almost without knowing it; "one drinketh 
iniquity like water," says the Book of God. 

"For when lust, 
By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk, 
But most by lewd and lavish acts of sin, 
Lets in defilement to the inward parts, 
The soul grows clotted by contagion, 
Imbodies and imbrutes, till she quite lose 
The divine property of her first being." 

One chair, a trunk, a dresser and a rug 
And that is all. 

"Yet there are those who have a little house, 
Set on a hill, where gay birds often come. 

While I — have this awaiting me each night, 
God pity me that I must call it home." 



I36 FAITHFUL TO HIS POST 

Speak no more to them of the church where they 
received their First Communion; speak no more of 
the Cross of Christ. Faith is dead within them. 
"They are," as St. Jude says, "clouds without water 
which are carried about by winds; trees of the 
autumn, unfruitful, twice dead, plucked out by the 
roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming out their 
own confusion ; wandering stars : to whom the storm 
of darkness is reserved forever. ,, 

Meanwhile the elder brother, faithful to his post, 
surveys and strides along each acre of his lands. 
He depends on nobody but God. His labor, I do 
not deny it, is hard, but he loves it. 

Hard, I said; yes, it is. Of course to city folk 
it is very picturesque to see a ploughman at work, 
for instance, on a soft early spring-day. It is a 
beautiful contrast, that light brown of the turned- 
over earth, and the fresh green of the remainder of 
the field ; and what more pleasing than these furrows 
so beautifully straight and regular? But go up 
and walk by the ploughman's side, you man from 
town, and see how you like it. You will find it 
hard and dirty work. In a few minutes you will 
find it difficult to drag along your feet, laden with 
some pounds weight to each of adherent earth; and 
you will have formed some idea of the physical 
exertion, and the constant attention, which the 
ploughman needs, to keep his furrow straight and 



UNDER THE CANOPY OF HEAVEN 1 37 

even, to retain the plough at the right depth in the 
ground, and to manage his horses. Hard work for 
him; and ill-paid work. No horse, mule, donkey, 
camel, or other beast of labor in the world, goes 
through so much exertion, in proportion to his 
strength, between sunrise and sunset, as does that 
rational being, all to earn shelter and fare for him 
and his family, all to produce food for you, O man 
from town. 

But hard as is his labor he finds it light because, 
as I said before, he loves it: quietly he goes to 
it, quietly he starts it, and at sundown he is happy 
because he has earned his share of the bread that 
feeds the world. 

"Though round his breast the rolling clouds are spread 
Eternal sunshine settles on his head." 

Nature is to him the great book ever wide open, 
with its peerless beauties and sublime mysteries. 
He knows its marvellous ever acting energy, and he 
knows its requirements which he fulfills as best 
he can. In the midst of the fields, no unsanitary 
contact has he to fear, no tyrannical authority has 
he to endure, for he is his own master. Poor as he 
may be, fresh air and sunshine are his : there are no 
microbes nor stench in his shop ; for he works under 
the canopy of heaven, under the lights of God, in 
the midst of good grass and flowers, in the company 



I38 WHEN SUNDAY COMES 

of the birds, whose joyous symphonies are heard 
from everywhere. And when comes the night he 
soundly sleeps during the hours that God gave us to 
sleep, and wakes up brave and happy for the hours 
that God gave us to work. 

It is true that his salary is not regular; but all 
things considered, it is better than the city-man's 
weekly wages. Expenses in the country cannot be 
compared with those in town. No profiteer's rent 
to pay on the first of the month; no baker's bill, 
for the housewife makes bread herself, — and how 
good it tastes! — out of the flour ground out from 
her own wheat; no bill at the meat-market either, 
for the poultry yard is well peopled and the larder 
is well stocked. The garden yields more vegetables 
than can be eaten, and I beg leave to tell you, O man 
from town, that these vegetables are ripe and fresh, 
like the fruits of the orchard which are so plentiful 
that even when the canning is done, some have to be 
sold. 

When Sunday comes, — the dear, delicious, silent 
Sunday, — it is both the Lord's Day and the day of 
respite, rest, and recreation. Mr. Churchill has said 
it well: "Sunday in the farm is a day essentially 
different from other days. — you can tell it without 
looking at the calendar. The sun knows it, and 
changes the quality of his light; the very animals, 
dogs and cats and horses know it : and most of all 
the children know it." Sunday is the Day when we 



IN SPITE OF HOME-SICKNESS I39 

all go to church to pray to God, who guides, protects 
and blesses us. 

To be religious is to be honest: one leads to the 
other. Faithful to the farm, the villager's soul 
knows of no hatred, no injustice, no envy, no 
jealousy : these words are not found in the farmer's 
vocabulary; for he believes in God and observes 
His commandments. 

If the deserter sometimes thinks of all this, if, 
closing his eyes for a moment, he sees anew "the 
orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wildwood, 

"And every loved spot which his infancy knew ! 
The wide-spreading pond, and the mill that stood by it, 
The bridge, and the rock where the cataract fell, 
The cot of his father, the dairy-house nigh it 
And even the rude bucket that hung in the well — 
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, 
The moss-covered bucket which hung in the well ;" 

(Smile if you like, my dear farmers, in reading 
this; I know that to him this would bring tears.) 
If he happens, when the sky is sad, to compare 
what he lost with what he found, less happy than 
the prodigal of the parable, he has not always, he 
has only seldom the courage — the backbone — to 
come back to the home of his childhood. How 
many of those poor wanderers, in spite of the ardent 
desires of their heart, in spite of the home-sickness 



I40 THEIR DEATH 

that corrodes their being, never more shall see that 
home where they were so well loved, those blessed 
fields where they could have lived such a happy life. 

"Am I mad that I should cherish that which bears but 
bitter fruit? 
I will tear it from my bosom, though my heart be at 
the root." 

Yes, perhaps at times they sigh something like 
this, and a little grain of conscience makes them sore. 
But it is too late. To break their fetters the mettle 
of energy were required; and gone is all energy 
within them. They like their tyrants, whose siren 
voices are so bewitching, and whose least call makes 
them thrill and throb to the core. And so, without 
even taking the trouble to try to resist, they lay 
themselves down at the foot of the tree of death. 
And all the world to them is bitter as a tear. And 
their heart chokes them till they hear it not. 
"Some dark night, it may be, they will puke up 
their sick existence by suicide/' as Carlyle says, 
graphically. 

At all events, their death usually will be a death 
without friends, without a priest — without God. 
And forty-eight hours afterwards, of that beautiful 
sample of manhood, built like a rock, entitled to a 
century of country life, capable of all labors and 
worthy of all true joys, there remains a corpse buried 



A SEMI-DIVINE POWER 141 

in that immense cemetery where country people never 
go because they would run the risk of getting lost, 
and because their dead sleep their last sleep in their 
own little acre of God, in the family lot, near the 
church at the foot of the Cross. 

Christian women, who so often are greatly 
responsible for the desertion of so many of our lads, 
remember these words of an old bishop: "If the 
prodigal son had not been mother-less, he would not 
have given up his home. ,, Never cease to en- 
courage your boys to stay with you; make home 
pleasant for them; use all your influence to keep 
them on the farm. Do not let them be disassociated 
from the holy earth. O mothers, when you gave 
them birth, yours was a semi-divine labor : yours is 
also a semi-divine power. 



CHAPTER XIV 

JESUS, THE GOOD SHEPHERD 

"I was a stricken deer that left the herd 
Long since. With many an arrow deep infixed 
My panting side was charged, when I withdrew 
To seek a tranquil death in distant shades. 
There was I found by One Who had Himself 
Been hurt by the archers. In His Heart He bore, 
And in His hands and feet, the cruel scars. 
With gentle force soliciting the darts, 
He drew them forth, and healed, and bade me live." 

Who among us, at times, has not felt like giving 
vent to sentiments similar to those expressed in these 
lines? The purest human heart, when weighed in 
the scales of the sanctuary, is ever found wanting. 
"He who thinks to be without sin deceives himself 
and the truth is not in him." We all need to be 
shepherded under the guidance of a sweet and strong 
hand and heart. 

And Jesus is the Good Shepherd of mankind. 

"No earthly images can come up," says Cardinal 
Newman, "to the awful and gracious truth that God 
became the Son of Man — that the Word became 

142 



HE DELIGHTS IN THIS IMAGE I43 

flesh and was born of a woman. This ineffable 
mystery surpasses human words. No titles of earth 
can Christ give to Himself, ever so lowly or mean, 
which will fitly show us His condescension. His 
act and deed is too great even for His own lips to 
utter it. Yet He delights in the image of the Good 
Shepherd, as conveying to us, in such degree as we 
can conceive it, some notion of the degradation, 
hardship and pain which He underwent for our 
sake." 

Jesus, the Good Shepherd — This word for our 
Saviour was uttered first by Jacob — himself once 
a shepherd — as he lay dying in his tent; and with 
the long thoughts of old age, went back to the 
scenery of his early life speaking of God as having 
"Shepherded him all his years." Christ was 
prophesied under this figure by the prophet Isaias : 
"Behold the Lord God will come with strong hand 
and His arm shall rule for Him. He shall feed 
His flock like a shepherd: He shall gather the 
lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom." 
And thus again, He announced by the mouth of 
Ezechiel: "Behold, I, even I, will both search My 
sheep, and seek them out. As a shepherd seeketh 
out His flock in the day that He is among His sheep, 
and will deliver them out of all places where they 
have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day." 
And David addresses Him : "Hear, O Thou Shep- 
herd of Israel, Thou that leadest Joseph like a sheep, 



144 THE GOLDEN THREAD 

show Thyself also, Thou that sittest upon the cheru- 
bim." And in like manner, St. Peter speaks of our 
returning "to the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls." 
All through the Holy Scriptures the golden thread 
runs until in the closing pages of the Apocalypse, 
we read of "the Lamb Who leads His flocks to the 
rivers of waters of life." 

Now what is the task and what is the relationship 
of a shepherd to his sheep? He likes these dumb 
creatures of his care. In the early morning he leads 
them from their fold to the pasture lands and to the 
still waters, that they may eat and drink where none 
may frighten or harm them. He heals them when 
they are sick. Should one of them go astray, he 
searches for it, tracking it by the tufts of wool left 
in the briars and thorns. Should danger assail, he 
must be ready to risk and give his life for his sheep. 
And such has been, and such is the life-work of 
Jesus for us. 



Jesus loves us; and with what love! "Con- 
ceive," says Father Faber, "all the love of Peter, 
Paul and John, of Joseph and of Magdalen, of all 
the apostles and martys, the confessors and virgins 
of the Church in all ages, thrown into one heart 
made, by miracle, strong enough to hold such love; 
then add to it all the burning love which the nine 



YES, EVEN IN THIS WORLD 1 45 

choirs of .multitudinous angels have for God and 
crown it with the amazing love of the Immaculate 
Heart of our dear Mother; and still it comes not 
near to, nay, it is but a poor imitation of the love 
which Jesus has for each one of us, however lowly 
and unworthy and sinful we may be!" Jesus loves 
us beyond the wildest dreams of imagination. He 
said Himself that He loves us with the very same 
love wherewith He is loved by His Father: an 
infinite, an immortal love. He loves us with an 
everlasting love, therefore has He drawn us, taking 
pity on us. He has loved us before we began to be. 
He has loved us in those darksome hours, when, 
through sin, we were His enemies. He has loved 
us gratuitously; for what have we done to deserve 
His love, and such love? What have we done but 
hurt His Heart by our indifference towards Him? 
Is it because He sees our weakness and the danger of 
the many seductions which beset us ? Is it because 
His own love impels Him to anticipate the times 
marked by His wisdom? I know not, but verily 
it seems that He can not restrain the overflowing of 
His Heart, and from the vast ocean of life, of which 
eternity is the natural shore, great waves pass be- 
yond their bounds and flow down to us in streams. 
Yes, even in this world, where everything wavers, 
where at every step we may fall into an abyss, 
amidst our darkness, struggles and sins, Jesus gives 
us the first fruits of His eternal happiness: He 



146 "my child, give me thy heart" 

loves us and saves us, as far as our liberty allows 
Him to do so, and in truth sows the seed of heaven 
in our hearts. 

If there were no irreverence in doing so, we would 
put these lines of a poet on the lips of the Divine 
Shepherd, for they may give us a faint idea of His 
love strong as death : 

"Come, rest in this Bosom, my own stricken deer, 
Tho' the herd have fled from thee, thy home is still 

here, 
Here still is the smile, that no cloud can o'ercast, 
And a Heart and a Hand all thy own to the last. 
I know not, I ask not if guilt is in that heart, 
I but know that I love thee whatever thou art." 

But, better, gentle reader, listen to His own divine 
words, for the most burning language of human 
poetry remains too cold when it strives to tell us of 
"the breadth, and the length, and the height, and the 
depth of the surpassing charity of Christ." "My 
child, give me thy heart." "What is there that I 
ought to have done for thee that I have not done?" 
"Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have 
pity on the son of her womb? and if she should 
forget, yet still will not I forget thee." "I will have 
mercy on thee more than a mother." "Even to 
your old age I am the same, and to your gray hairs 
I will carry you. I have made you, and I will bear, 



"if your sins be as scarlet" 147 

I will save you." "Your whole head is sick and 
your whole heart is sad. Yet wash yourselves ; take 
away the evil of your devices from My eyes. Learn 
to do well; if your sins be as scarlet, they shall be 
made as white as snow; and if they be red as 
crimson, they shall be white as wool." 

But true love is never contented with words. It 
longs to prove itself by deeds. The Good Shep- 
herd's love manifests itself every day to His sheep 
in manifold ways. It would be useless to try to 
enumerate a tithe of them here. 



II 



Jesus, the Good Shepherd, feeds His sheep. He 
is the bread of life: whosoever eats His flesh has 
life in him. Jesus lpoked over the universe and 
He found nothing worthy of our souls; then He 
constituted Himself our food. This wondrous deed 
of goodness and love we shall understand only in 
heaven. In the meantime this divine food we must 
receive often, for it is the food of those who are 
well; not the remedy of those who are ill. "It is 
not offered to a select portion of the flock," says 
Tesniere, "but to all who have need of His flesh, 
in order to live of His life and to secure to them- 
selves its eternal possession. Now, all men belong 
to this necessitous class. Jesus presents Himself 
not as a rare aliment to make a holiday feast more 



I48 THE DESIRE OF HIS HEART 

sumptuous, but as the daily bread necessary for the 
support of ordinary life, and which must in con- 
sequence be eaten every day. This distribution of 
the Bread of life is as large, abundant and infinite 
as His love for man. It is the measure of His 
Heart. The desire of His Heart is to supply the 
daily needs of all men; needs of restoration, needs 
of conservation, needs of action, needs of spiritual 
fecundity and constant progress even to the perfec- 
tion and plenitude of eternal life.^ To free her 
from her daily faults the soul needs the daily anti- 
dote of the Eucharist. The holy Communion being 
the individual appropriation of the whole work of 
Christ, he who communicates receives personally 
the redemption of the whole world. St. Paul says 
that "he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth 
and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the 
Body of the Lord." But then, he who receives the 
Holy Communion worthily eats and drinks acquittal 
and salvation. "He that eateth My flesh and drink- 
eth My blood, abideth in Me and I in him," says our 
Lord ; both are thereby united, not only in one spirit 
but in one flesh and one body, the Body of Christ. 
Speaking of the newly-made Christians, St. Leo 
teaches that "they are no more the same after their 
baptism: the flesh of those baptized becomes the 
flesh of the Crucified." What then shall we say of 
those coming from the altar-rails, since the sacra- 
mental communion is the earthly consummation of 



INFINITE LOVE 1 49 

the union started at baptism? If the divine Grace 
and the Sacraments unite us to Jesus in such wise 
that truly we may draw near God in the self -same 
manner as Jesus Himself, what can God refuse us? 
It is not only sympathy with Jesus that causes God 
to welcome us : it is the respect He owes His eternal 
Son : it is the infinite love He harbors for Him ; aye, 
it is the very necessity of His nature and the invin- 
cible energy of His Divine Fatherhood. "No love 
less than infinite love, ,, says Bishop Vaughan, "could 
have devised or contrived half so beauteous or half 
so sumptuous a banquet for the weary pilgrim, 
winding his way along the dusty road of life to the 
great city of God. Further than this we can not 
go — at least not in this life. There is nothing be- 
tween this and the Beatific Vision itself. In the 
adorable Eucharist we have all that we shall ever 
have in heaven. The differences are only accidental. 
When the consecrated particle rests upon our 
tongues, we hold within us all that constitutes the 
essential bliss of the saints in eternal glory, the 
difference is merely that we fail to realize it. We 
possess it, but without being able to estimate what 
we possess. If, by some stupendous miracle, our 
eyes were suddenly opened, we should find that 
we were really in heaven; or rather that heaven 
itself had come down upon us, and entered into our 
souls." It is thus that the Good Shepherd feeds 
His sheep. 



150 GODS JUSTICE 

III 

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, goeth after the sheep 
which is lost, until H£ findeth it. And when He hath 
found it, He layeth it on His shoulder, rejoicing. 
When a soul has gone astray from Him, He follows 
her with His grace and His light. He calls her 
through those thousand and one events framed by 
His fatherly providence, and leaves her only when 
He has exhausted all possible efforts to lead her 
back to the fold. He alone, who bowed Himself 
and came down, He alone can do this : He alone can 
bear the whole world's weight, the load of a sinful 
world, the burden of man's guilt, the accumulated 
debt, past, present, and to come; the suffer- 
ing which we owed but could not pay, the 
wrath of God on the children of Adam. No 
doubt, sin injures the heart of Christ in as much 
as it offends Him, but it does not modify Him. It 
modifies His acts, but not His essence; it does not 
change His love which is His natural disposition 
towards us. As before nothingness His goodness 
becomes love, so in face of sin, this love melts into 
mercy on the sole condition that the sinful sheep 
shall hope in the Shepherd, the Good Shepherd of 
mankind. And in certain respects, no one has 
such reason to hope in God, as a sinner has. True, 
divine Sanctity has such a horror of sin that it 
obliges divine Justice to punish it with the most 
frightful penalties, but this is precisely the reason 



GODS MERCY 151 

why divine Mercy is incomparably more moved by 
sin than by all the other misfortunes that can befall 
us. For, if we regard it on the side of the punish- 
ment it deserves, sin is the loss of God; it is then 
the greatest evil and truly the absolute misery. But 
shall not the greatest misery draw the greatest com- 
passion? Such is the reason why divine Mercy, in 
this matter, more than in any other, stirs itself, as 
it were, that the sinner be led to repentance, and 
trusting and hoping in God may obtain pardon and 
be saved. 

Someone whose name is unknown has prettily 
rendered this aspect of Jesus the Searcher of souls. 
The edge of the words of the Gospel has been so 
blurred by use, that it may perhaps help some of us 
to realize it more vividly if we hear from them now 
in this poetical form : 

"There were ninety and nine that safely lay 
In the shelter of the fold, 
But one was out on the hills away, 
Far off from the gates of gold ; 
Away on the mountains wild and bare, 
Away from the tender Shepherd's care. 

u 'Lord, Thou hast here Thy ninety and nine ; 

Are they not enough for Thee ?' 
But the Shepherd made answer : This of Mine 
JJas. wandered away from Me; 



152 THE BEST MAY STILL BE THINE 

And although the road be rough and steep, 
I go to the desert to find My sheep/ 

"But none of the ransomed ever knew 
How deep were the waters crossed ; 
Nor how dark was the night that the Lord passed 

through 
Ere He found His sheep that was lost. 
Out in the desert He heard its cry — 
Sick and helpless and ready to die. 

" TLord, whence are those blood-drops all the way 
That mark out the mountain's track?' 
'They were shed for one who had gone astray 

Ere the Shepherd could bring him back.' 
'Lord, whence are Thy hands so rent and torn ?' 
'They are pierced to-night by many a thorn/ 

"And all through the mountains, thunder-riven, 

And up from the rocky steep 
There rose a cry to the gate of heaven, 

'Rejoice! I have found My sheep!' 
And the angels echoed around the throne — 
'Rejoice, for the Lord brings back His own 



9 97 



Gentle reader, I tell thee ; be never discouraged by 
thy past, but know that, whatever it has been, the 
best may still be thine. 



"greater love than this . . • ." 153 
IV 

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, giveth His life for His 
sheep. But he that is a hireling and whose own the 
sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming and leaveth the 
sheep and fleeth, and the wolf catcheth them and 
scattereth the sheep. "Greater love than this no man 
hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends." 

But what shall we say of the Shepherd laying 
down His life for His sheep? Our English tongue 
has golden words, but no words can convey the 
fathomless mystery of such divine condescension. 
Even the Prophet stammers and reels when dealing 
with this abysmal love : "And he says : Ah, ah, ah, 
Lord God: behold I cannot speak." Paul alone 
perhaps conveys the complete truth when, set face 
to face with this proof of boundless love, he dares 
call it "the folly of the Cross;" a love so profound 
and so prodigal, so strenuous and so extravagant 
that it goes beyond all possible limits: not against, 
but above the powers of human reason. 

And didst thou notice? "The Good Shepherd 
giveth." There is neither past nor future in His 
gift: it is the Eternal Present. Yea, it is every day 
Good Friday; Christ renews His death at every mo- 
ment of the day on the altar! The Mass is that 
substantial, universal, incessant irradiation of the 
sacrifice offered by Jesus on Calvary ; it is that ever 
living trophy of the Lamb slain for the world; it 



154 HOLY MASS 

gives us anew the Divine Lover dead for us; it 
continues not only His sacred death, but His 
whole life, His life divine and human; it continues it 
for God whom it glorifies and gladdens ; it continues 
it for us to whom it gives the very substance of 
Redemption. 

St. Teresa oppressed by the weight of God's grace, 
asked Him one day to tell her how she could pay 
Him her debt of gratitude. The Holy Ghost told 
her to hear one Mass; after which her debt would 
be paid. Ah! were all hell to engulf you as a 
volcano of despair; were Satan to whisper in your 
ear, as he did into that of Judas, a thousand reasons 
for trusting your Shepherd no more, just attend 
one Mass; think of what one Mass is: the light of 
love that shall stream forth from the Divine Host 
will destroy those dark clouds, and silencing the 
enemy of God, bring back into your heart that holy 
light which gives peace in giving faith and hope. 
Alas ! why do we not make the most of every Mass 
we hear, why do we hear Mass in such a languid, 
irresponsible fashion, the Mass in which "the Good 
Shepherd giveth His life for His sheep!" 



We say every day that "we are His people, and 
the sheep of His pasture," we say that "we have 
erred and strayed from His ways, like lost sheep." 



OUR ADVOCATE WITH THE FATHER 1 55 

Let us never forget these truths ; let us never forget 
that, on the one hand, we are sinners, but that, on 
the other hand, Christ is our Guide, our Guardian, 
our Shepherd. Let us beware of not following 
when He goes before: "He calleth His own sheep 
by name and leadeth them out and goeth before, 
and His sheep follow Him, for they know His 
voice." As on His resurrection, while Mary Mag- 
dalen wept, He called her by name; so, too, He 
calls us by our name. Let us answer to His call. 
Let us love Him who has first loved us." "Let 
us endeavor," as says St. Teresa, "not to wander 
far from our dear Shepherd ; for the sheep that keep 
near the Shepherd are always the most caressed, 
the best fed, and they often receive some chosen 
dainty from the Shepherd's own repast." 

Blessed are they who give the flower of their 
years, and the vigor of soul and body to Him; 
blessed are they who in their youth go to Him Who 
gave His life for them. Blessed are they who de- 
cide — come happiness, come sorrow, come sunshine, 
come storm — that He shall be their Lord and Master, 
their King and Shepherd. 

Even if sinful days should come, let us remember 
that Jesus the Good Shepherd is "our advocate with 
the Father, and He is the propitiation for our sins." 
Let us remember that there is never a situation so 
strained as to preclude the possibility of pardon. 
Let us remember that if Judas is lost, it is not for 



I56 THE SIN OF JUDAS 

having sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, but for 
having despaired of the Good Shepherd's divine 
Mercy. This Good Shepherd is such an inexhaust- 
ible fountain of mercy and goodness, that the most 
faithful mother could not snatch from the flames 
her own beloved child so eagerly as He helps a man 
of contrite heart; even were it possible that he had 
committed every day, and a thousand times over, 
the sins of the world. 

" 'Him can no fount of fresh forgiveness lave, 

Whose sins, once washed by the baptismal wave/ ' } 
So spoke the fierce Tertullian. But she sighed 
The Infant Church! of love she felt the tide 
Stream on her from her Lord's yet recent grave 
And then she smiled : and in the Catacombs, 
With eye suffused but heart inspired true, 
On those walls subterranean, where she hid 
Her head, 'mid ignominy, death, and tombs, 
She her Good Shepherd's hasty image drew." 

Love has no diviner emblem than the Good Shep- 
herd. It seems that it was by an inspiration both of 
holiness and genius that the Ven. Mother Euphrasia 
Pelletier of Angers chose Him as the patron and the 
model of her redeeming Order. It has been said 
that Mary Magdalen, the repentant, sinful Mary, 
reigns now in heaven next to the sinless Mary, the 
Mother of Jesus. But who will say how many 
Magdalens are marching heavenwards, thanks to 



A SERVANT IN THEIR HOUSE 1 57. 

the Sisters of this most noble Order of charity? A 
servant in their house a few years ago, it was my 
good fortune to attend the angelic death of one of 
their "children." Before returning to God, with 
the sad smile of those whom we are to see never- 
more, she gave me the following lines, which will 
close appropriately this little study in honor of Jesus 
the Good Shepherd: 

"Into a desolate land, 

White with the drifted snow, 
Into a weary land 

Our truant-footsteps go: 
Yet doth Thy care, O Father, 

Ever Thy wanderers keep; 
Still doth Thy love, O Shepherd, 

Follow Thy sheep. 

"Over the pathless wild 

Do I not see Him come? 
Him Who shall bear me back, 

Him Who shall lead me home? 
Listen! between the storm-gusts 

Unto the straining ear, 
Comes not the cheering whisper — 

'Jesus is near?' 

"Over me He is bending! 
Now I can safely rest 



I5& THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE 

Found at last and clinging 
Close to the Shepherd's breast : 

So let me lie till the fold-bells 
Sound on the homeward track, 

And the rejoicing angels 
Welcome us back." 

O Shepherd Eternal, allow us to lie near Thee. 
We are finite ; but Thine infinitely. We are groping 
in the dark like sheep that have gone astray: but 
Thou art the Way. We are bewildered by many 
winds of error: but Thou art the Truth. We are 
weak, wan and weary : but Thou art the Life. Jesus 
our Good Shepherd help the sheep of Thy fold that 
at least we may be "found at the last." Thou hast 
said that Thy sheep hear Thy Voice; and Thou 
knowest them, and they follow Thee. But other 
sheep Thou hast that are not of this fold; them also 
Thou must bring, and they shall hear Thy Voice. 
O Shepherd Immortal, let them hear the whisperings 
of Thy still, small Voice which it is so easy to hear 
near Thy Tabernacle. May Thy Kingdom come. 

"Great Shepherd of our souls! O, guide 
Thy wandering flock to feed 
In the pastures green, and by the side 

Of stilly waters lead. 
Do thou our erring footsteps keep, 
Whose life was given for the sheep. 



THE HOLY EUCHARIST 1 59 

"O, let not us, who fain would cleave 
To thy communion, stray, 
Nor, tempted into ruin, leave 

The straight and narrow way : 
Before us thou the path hast trod, 
And thou canst lead us, Son of God. 

"O, let us hear thy warning voice, 

And see thy arm divine; 
Thou know'st the people of thy choice, 

And thou art known of thine. 
Do thou our erring footsteps keep, 
Whose life was given for the sheep. 

"Then when we pass the vale of death, 
Though more and more its shade, 
Around our journey darkeneth, 

We will not be afraid, 
If thou art with us, and thy rod 
And staff console us, Son of God." 

It is enlightened by the Light that arises 
from the most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar 
that the souls that are astray will find the way to 
the fold. 

The dogma of the Holy Eucharist is not only 
the most beautiful and consoling dogma: it is the 
central doctrine of our religion and the very focus of 
Divine Light and Love. It is the Sun in which 



l6o THE TENANT OF THE TABERNACLE 

Jesus has set His Tabernacle. And the Tabernacle 
is nothing else but the tent pitched on earth till the 
last evening of time by Jesus the Good Shepherd of 
mankind. 



CHAPTER XV 

OUR LORD WITH HIS HARVESTERS 

One single word seems to sum up all the dealings 
of our Lord with His Disciples, — a word which has 
now become well nigh commonplace, because, 
thanks be to Him, we have used it so often, but a 
word most majestic and sublime in its origin, since 
it recalls to our mind the very Being of God. Good- 
ness is the word, effusive, patient, forgiving, Self- 
sacrificing goodness. 

The manifestation of this goodness we first notice 
when He calls them to Him. On the banks of the 
Jordan, after the testimony of St. John the Baptist, 
two fishermen of Galilee, John and Andrew, draw 
near to Him. "What seek you?" He asks them. 
It was more than the two young men could answer. 
Yet their reply shows that they are in earnest: 
"Rabbi, where dwellest thou?" "Come and see," 
He says to them. They go and stay with Him. 

The day after, Andrew tells his brother Simon: 
"We have found the Messiah !" And his brother 
comes to Jesus and surrenders to Him. 

A fourth one, Philip, is found along the road, 
"Follow me," Jesus says, and he follows Him. 

161 



l62 a turning point in history 

A little further on, He sees Nathanael reading 
under a fig tree. And He culls him as a flower. 

He arrives at Capharnaum and sees a man sitting 
in the custom house, and He calls Him. — And so of 
the others. 

Needless to say that these apparently casual calls 
are the outcome of an infinite wisdom and an al- 
mighty will. All events are disposed, adapted, fore- 
thought, and forecast by God, but specially is this 
true of the events bearing upon the work of Redemp- 
tion. 

To mark this truth in His own way, Jesus the 
first time He meets some of His Disciples, gives 
them new names characteristic of their mission. 
And such a reading into the far away vistas of their 
future already empurples these seemingly simple 
calls with a tinge of eternity. 

The call of the Apostles is undoubtedly one of 
the turning-points in the history of the universe, but 
if we look on them after the manner of men, how 
pitifully insignificant they are, these Apostles! 
Mostly all are fishermen, and one of them is a 
publican. But it matters not : dead are their yester- 
days, they are the men of an ever-living future. 

The future! How did the future appear to 
them? What an image could they form of it? 
Very cloudy no doubt it was, and very slowly did 
they enter into their career of being the co-founders 
of the Church and co-workers with the God-Man. 



SACRED FRUITFULNESS 1 63 

They were not aware of what they were to be, but 
this they knew that they had "to bear fruits." It 
was our Lord's favored expression with them. And 
there is no nobler task than to be fruit-bearing 
branches on the Divine Tree. 

If the Creator, says St. Thomas, had given us only 
our being, He would have reserved for Him the 
better part of life. But He gave to His creatures 
not only the gift of existence, He gave them also the 
power of communicating their existence; and this is 
why, fruitfulness, in any sense, ever involves some- 
thing of Sacredness and Divineness. Wherefore 
are they profoundly guilty who profane that gift; 
who dare use the orchards and nurseries of God 
merely for selfish and shameful commerce, and con- 
trive to control the very work of God. Wherefore 
those must be branded as cowards who could be of 
service through their brain or through their brawn, 
be useful to their brethren and yield an uplifting 
influence over their family, their state and their 
nation, but abstain from fulfilling their task in the 
midst of sinful idleness. For, as Shakespeare says : 

"Thyself and thy belongings 
Are not thine own so proper as to waste 
Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee 
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, 
Not light them for themselves ; for if our virtues 



164 HIS FELLOWSHIP 

Did not go forth of us 'twere all alike 
As if we had them not." 

Those, therefore, whom God calls, like His Disciples 
to spiritual fruitfulness and to the communication 
and development of divine gifts, never enough shall 
they wield their energy to make themselves worthy 
of their vocation. 

This truth Jesus did not fail to instill into them. 
"You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you." 
It was as though He said: "Believe not that in 
coming to Me you have conferred a benefit on Me; 
you have but received what I have given. I have 
chosen you, and you are the greater because of your 
having been chosen. Election is simply the way in 
which I use My chosen ones to bless the world — the 
divine process by which the good seed is sown and 
scattered far and wide, and the heavenly harvest 
multiplied a thousandfold." 

The Call to the Disciples was then His first proof 
of goodness to them, and this goodness not indeed 
preceded or deserved by any merit on their 
part, was nevertheless followed by all the conse- 
quences which it involves, ahead .of them all is 
fellowship. 

At first glance there is something strange and well 
nigh shocking in the Master's fellowship with His 
Disciples. 

Jesus Christ »is the Man for all men : it seems that 



"lonely to the lone we go" 165 

He can belong to no particular group, and should 
stay by Himself to lord it over the work to be done. 
And then Jesus Christ is God: as such fellowship 
with men seems impossible and absurd. For fellow- 
ship means equality; it is the blending of lives; it is 
the brotherhood of hearts in an assented closeness ; it 
is the mutual levelling of souls; it involves commun- 
ion of thoughts, desires, and anxieties ; it is love with 
its manifold freedom. But, then, what manner of 
intimacy can there be between Jesus Christ and men? 
Men are so feeble, so empty of heart and of hands; 
He is so transcendent, so beyond the limits of the 
world and of life. 

Is it not the destiny of great men to live alone 
and to allow none on earth to invade the home of 
the soul whose name is intimacy? Friendless were 
Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, Beethoven and Dante ; 
friendless were Isaiah and Moses. They had con- 
fidents; they had satellites of their glory; they had 
servants; standing alone in an immense isolation 
they had no intimate friends: their soul was too 
high; their atmosphere no other man could share. 
They were as though marked with a sign of dread. 
Theirs was the song of the poet: 

"Yes, in the sea of life enisled, 

With echoing straits between us thrown, 
Dotting the shoreless watery wild, 
We mortal millions live alone." 



1661 "divine to the divinity" 

How greater than they, the Divine Master! No 
soul here can enter the lists with Him; no thought 
can ever even from afar rival or imitate His thought. 
Whoso would flatter Himself to be even His inferior 
thereby would give proofs of insane pride. For 
inferiority implies a comparison, and no comparison 
is possible with Him. He is infinite, He is immense, 
He is God. None can stand near Him; none can 
enter into His heart. 

All this is true, but there is in Him something 
besides greatness. There is in Him a divine con- 
descension, which makes Him just one unit in the 
census of mankind, a condescension which lowers 
Him to our size, a condescension which leaves Him 
great, and greatest, and infinitely great, but raises 
us up to Him. This is Jesus as we see Him in the 
Gospels. 

Tradition claims that He tempered the bright- 
ness of His eyes whose power was not adapted to 
the commerce of our daily life. I know not, but 
it is sure that He tempered the brightness of His 
soul, and knew, when such was His will, how to 
be a Friend, the Friend of men, the Friend that 
remains when all others leave us. 

Thus was He with His Disciples. He set Him- 
self to their level; He offered to them Himself as a 
centre for sympathy, intimate communication, 
familiar conversation, confidence and even playsome 



NOT TOO GREAT FOR HIM 1 67 

but discreet flashes of humor, traces of which 
appear in the Holy Scriptures. 

When the Divine Master is about to multiply the 
barley loaves, He sees Philip near Him, and know- 
ing his artlessness, He says, no doubt with gentle 
merriment: "Philip, where are we to buy bread 
for all these people to eat?" This He said to test 
him, as St. John remarks. But Philip fails to grasp 
it: "Seven pounds worth of bread would not be 
enough for them, for everybody to get even a 
morsel." This trait shows that amenity that 
reigned in the dealings of Jesus and His Disciples. 

And mark the delicate tinge of it. It is not 
laughter: laughter is heavy semi-material; therein 
enters usually a touch of pride and of ill-will. "It 
has a scornful tickling;" at best it indicates a lack of 
self-possession, since it is as a rule beyond the 
control of the will; no, we see no laughter, but we 
see a smile, a kind, noble, spiritual smile, such as it 
is to be found in a superior nature as that of the 
Master. 1 

In His everyday intercourse with His own, the 

1 G. K. Chesterton, in Orthodoxy, p. 299, tells us that 
"There was some one thing that was too great for God to 
show us when He walked our earth; and I have sometimes 
fancied that it was His mirth." But those who have gone 
into the heart of the Gospels and found out that joy is 
essentially Christian, will see that we have nothing to detract 
from what we wrote. 



1 68 "as no man ever spoke' ' 

tone of Jesus is gravely sweet and simple. He 
calls them His friends, His little children, His flock ; 
He explains to them in private what He has taught 
the multitude: "To you it is given to know the 
mystery of the Kingdom of God; but to them that 
are without, all things are done in parables." He 
takes them apart to chat with them. Along the 
roads, from village to village He teaches and 
comforts them. He takes a motherly care of them, 
invites them to rest when the journey has been long, 
and blesses their sleep while He Himself retires to 
pray to His Father. 

Or again, at the noon hour, when the Oriental 
heat is extreme — the sun blinding and scorching 
man and beast — He takes them aside under some 
palm tree or in one of those numberless grottos of 
Galilee, and there, in the midst of them, He speaks, 
"as no man ever spoke." And the flitting time 
spends itself sweet and fruitful in the preparation 
for the stern labors, and the Disciples are wooed and 
won by that love the measure of which is to be 
measureless : "As the Father hath loved Me, I also 
have loved you. Abide in My love," He says, 
"He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that 
despiseth you, despiseth Me; and He that despiseth 
Me, despiseth Him that sent Me." "He that 
receiveth you, receiveth Me." "Whosoever shall not 
receive you, nor hear your words; going forth out of 
that house or city shake off the dust from your feet; 



HIS DIVINE TENDERNESS 169 

amen I say to you it shall be more tolerable for the 
land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judg- 
ment, than for that city." 

At times His heart overflows with tenderness, 
not that soft tenderness that arises out of sensi- 
tiveness and merely impinges upon the mind, but that 
virile tenderness as truly great hearts understand it. 

One day He spoke to the multitude in the 
presence of Pharisees, and vehement were His words, 
and the Disciples as usual were near Him, and lo! in 
the midst of His discourse, "His mother and His 
brothers came," says St. Matthew. And as some 
one told Him of their arrival, He replied without 
breaking the thread of His thought: "Who is my 
mother and who are my brethren?" And stretch- 
ing His hand towards those around Him, and lov- 
ingly glancing on them: "Behold," He said, "My 
mother and My brethren! for whosoever shall do 
the will of My Father in heaven, the same is My 
brethren and sister and mother." A sublime grad- 
ation of tenderness, which of a union of strength 
passes to one of charm, and blends both in that ocean 
which is called a mother's heart. 

Such is the Divine Master as we delight to con- 
template Him. We claim our share of those 
effusions and of that fellowship with which on 
earth He blessed His Apostles. Like them we are 
His friends, His brethren, His little ones. To us 
also He says : "As the Father hath loved Me, I also 



170 HIS PATIENCE 

have loved you." Through His loving grace we 
belong to His society and family — His Church. 
We may call Him our Friend, our alter-ego> and in 
doing so, far from being irreverent we comply with 
the very desire of His heart. In spirit we may 
converse with Him, busy ourselves with His 
interests, inquire into His mysteries, and assume 
the care of His glory. A place is prepared for us 
in Heaven which is His Kingdom and through Him 
is to be our Kingdom. 

I said that the goodness of Jesus for His own 
manifests itself in the vocation to which He called 
them and the friendliness with which He tended 
them. But it manifests itself also in His patience 
with them. Patience here is the silence of His 
power. Indeed there was need of patience in dealing 
with these men "of little understanding," "fearful," 
"worldly," and "of little faith," — even as we are — 
full of good will, yes, but how weak and how blind! 
As soon as the Master begins somewhat to soar in 
His speeches they fail to follow Him, they forget 
everything: "If you knew Me, you would know My 
Father. You know Me now and you have seen 
Him," He says to them. And Philip replies: 
"Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for 



us." 



He preaches humility; and they crave for "the 
chief seats" — even at the Last Supper; charity, and 



"their eyes were blinded" 171 

they want fire to come down from heaven and con- 
sume the Samaritan city. He strives to make them 
understand the spiritual character of His Kingdom, 
but they cling to the idea of a temporal Kingdom 
and wish to obtain from Him the promise of pre- 
eminence in it. He tells them that His Kingdom 
is not of this world; that the Kingdom of God is 
within them ; that they must labor not for the food 
which perisheth but for that lasting food which 
means eternal life. The words reach their ears, but 
glide over their souls, as the seed upon a rock. 

When He forecasts the days of the future: the 
spiritual instead of the carnal empire which they 
crave for, this time they are crushed ; it is absolutly 
beyond the ken of their vision. "They understood 
Him not, and they were afraid to ask Him." 
"Their eyes were blinded.'' Such expressions often 
recur in the Gospels. 

Characteristic of the state of their souls is what 
happened one day at Cesarea Philippi. Jesus re- 
vealed to them His intended journey to Jerusalem, 
His rejection by the leaders of His nation, the 
anguish and insult that awaited Him, His violent 
death. And Peter rises to his feet and interrupts 
those solemn utterances. He takes Jesus by the 
hand, leads Him a step or two aside, and begins to 
rebuke Him. "God forbid," He says, "this shall 
certainly not happen to Thee." And Jesus, severe 
this time, turning away from him, says : "Get thee 



172 "a stone of stumbling" 

behind Me, Satan ; thou art a stumbling-block to 
Me; for thy thoughts are not the thoughts of God, 
but of men." 

Poor, dear St. Peter! He must have returned 
somewhat ashamed to his group; but well he knew 
from what Heart the words had streamed. The 
comparison, however, must have sunk deeply into 
his mind, for he too in his Epistle warns his readers 
against some, to whom, because they believe not, 
the headstone of the corner became "a stone of 
stumbling and a rock of offense." 

For all this, the extreme cases of severity on the 
part of our Lord were rare. As a rule He was 
graciously forbearing. For all their miseries He 
has an inexhaustible condescension, — the compas- 
sion, the gentleness, the kindness of a mother. 
Their frailties and even their follies in no wise alter 
His exquisite tenderness for them. 

See this page, which is the necessary corrective 
of the other, and one of the most delightful in the 
Gospels. 

Jesus is alone. The Disciples are in a group, 
some distance from Him. They are discussing 
among themselves their endless controversy on 
precedence. It is not an impossible conjecture that 
the dispute had been stirred up by a claim of Judas, 
as being the office-bearer. At all events they boldly 
come to the Master and ask Him which of them 
shall be the greatest in the Kingdom, 



"he waited !" 



173 



Jesus answers not a word, but calling to Him a 
little boy, and lifting him in His arms and pressing 
him fondly to His breast, He sets him among them 
and says : "Verily, I say to you, unless you be con- 
verted and become as little children, you shall not 
enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever, 
therefore, shall humble himself as this little child, 
he is the greater in the kingdom of heaven." A 
graceful picture, worthy of the Son of God, full of 
grace and truth. 

No doubt painful and odious to Him were those 
continuous claims and clamors of His Disciples. 
But they were His children, they were the little flock 
for whom He was to give His life, and He was 
patient with them and He spared them, "He waited/' 
as the Scriptures say. 

"He waited !" How many times has not God 
waited for man! Notwithstanding our sottish 
pride, our lack of charity, our outrageous selfish- 
ness — that eagerness with which we grasp every- 
thing that flatters us, — He waits for us, He forgets 
Himself. Behold, He standeth behind our wall; 
He looketh in at the windows ; He glanceth through 
the lattice. Behold, He standeth at the gate and 
knocks. He does not mind our delay; He will tell 
us to-morrow what we refuse to hear to-day; and 
cold and unyielding though we remain, He continues 
to irradiate us with His grace, like the sun that 



174 IN THE UPPER ROOM 

shines majestic and tranquil above the frozen poles. 
Thus Jesus proceeds with the Apostles and with us. 
By persuasion, not by rebuke, does He deal with us. 
He knows that God has His hours but that man has 
also his own hours, and, instead of chiding, He 
bides His time, He teaches, He sows the seed and 
waits for the growth of His lessons. Stony may be 
the hearts that gravitate before Him but He strives 
to find a cleft whereinto He may enter. And some- 
times He succeeds and sometimes He fails, but He 
ever goes on loving us as though He were in need of 
our love. 

Come the red days of the Passion, those darkly 
red days, when the soul of the Savior is steeped 
in awful dereliction and desolation. To say it 
with Bishop Ullathorne, "it is then that He reaches 
the last degree of spiritual suffering with the last 
degree of patience." Oh, that evening discourse, on 
Holy Thursday, in the Upper Room! That 
Supreme Supper when, "after having loved His own 
who are in the world He loves them to the end," 
He loves them to the last limits of love in giving 
them the Holy Eucharist! . . . One after another 
all the prophecies are fulfilled ! . . . Listen to those 
sacred utterances which St. John alone has been bold 
enough to relate ! . . . And hovering over all this, 
towering above all this, that feeling, that motherly 
feeling, His desire to console His own in advance 
for their cowardly conduct of to-morrow; to excuse 



"a new commandment" 175 

them for what they will do against Him ; to assuage 
the pain of that remorse which heavily will batter 
their heart ! "Little children, yet a little while I am 
with you. You shall seek Me, and as I said to the 
Jews, whither I go you cannot come, so I say to you 
now. A new commandment I give unto you, that 
you love one another, as I have loved you, that you 
also love one another. By this shall all men know 
that you are My disciples, if you have love one for 
another." 

"Why cannot I follow Thee now?" exclaims St. 
Peter, "I will lay down my life for Thee." 

Jesus answers : "Wilt thou lay down thy life for 
Me? Amen, I say to thee, the cock shall not crow 
till thou deny Me thrice. ,, And addressing Himself 
again to the Eleven — for now Judas was gone : "Let 
not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, 
believe also in Me." 

And later on, seeing them under the spell of His 
tenderness, and at last expressing their faith ardent 
and entire, He says : "So now you believe Me, but 
behold, the time is coming, it has come already, 
when you will be scattered to your homes, every one 
of you, leaving Me alone. But I am not alone, for 
the Father is with Me. I have said all this to you 
that in Me you may have peace. In the world you 
shall have distress : but have confidence, I have over- 
come the world." A mother sees in her prodigal's 
departure but her prodigal's danger : so does Jesus. 



176 JUDAS, ONE OF THE TWELVE 

The Disciples are not haughty but they are 
piteously weak. And He thinks of the despondency 
into which they may fall and He safeguards them 
against it: "Let not your heart be troubled/' such 
is the burden of His song. "And I have told you 
before it has come to pass that when it shall come 
to pass, you may believe." 

But what shall we say of Judas! Judas one of 
the Twelve, one of those to whom He said : "I will 
not now call you servants, but I call you friends/' 
Judas, the son of perdition. Full well Jesus knew 
that he was to be His betrayer: and during three 
years He kept him in His fellowship, treating him 
like the others, calling him to the same destinies, 
wrapping him, up in His mantle of love. Not only 
did He not point out that "He knew whom He had 
chosen/' but He gave him a mark of special confi- 
dence: He appointed him treasurer of the small 
stock of apostolic community. Why? Because 
perhaps he was best fitted for such task, but also 
in mercy to him, in view of his character. To 
engage in that for which a man is naturally fitted is 
the most likely means of keeping him from brooding. 
On the other hand, it must be admitted that as most 
of our life-temptations come to us from that for 
which we have most aptitude, when Judas was 
alienated and unfaithful in heart, this very thing 
became also his greatest temptation, and, indeed, 



LENGTHILY AND IN SILENCE 1 77 

hurried him to his ruin. But only after he had first 
failed inwardly. And so, as ever in like circum- 
stances, the very things which might have been most 
of blessing became most of curse, and the judgment 
of hardening fulfills itself by that which in itself is 
good. Nor could the purse have been afterwards 
taken from him without both exposing him to others, 
and precipitating his moral destruction. And so 
he had to be left to the process of inward ripening, 
till all was ready for the sickle. 

Mysterious is the attitude of Jesus before His 
betrayer. Perhaps, if we could analyze His feelings 
when in contact with Judas, we thereby would reach 
and grasp not only the Passion of His Heart, but the 
very heart of His Passion. As Bishop Ullathorne 
puts it: "The agony He felt at the gradual falling 
away of His poor, miserable apostle comes out when 
He speaks of His coming Passion. He mentions a 
few only of the sufferings that were in store for 
Him, the sharpest, and chiefly the pains of the soul 
— mocking, spitting, betrayal. This last was the 
worst. He could bear insult, and cruelty from the 
Gentiles, who knew Him not, but betrayal from one 
of His own! Oh, the anguish there is in these 
words at the Last Supper: 'Amen, I say to you, one 
of you shall betray Me/ " 

Lengthily and in silence He willed to taste that 
royally bitter sweetness of being betrayed by a 



178 A SUPREME CLIMAX 

friend; a friend on whom He had lavished His 
kindness ; a friend whose feet He had washed, when 
He knew He was already sold by him; a friend 
whom He had destined to be one of the twelve 
judges in heaven; a friend whom He called His 
friend, even when being betrayed with a kiss, to 
show thereby that he still was entitled to that name 
if such were his wish, to show thereby also His su- 
preme effort of patience. Here as nowhere else 
are revealed the very summits of the goodness of 
Jesus, for from the manner He dealt with Judas we 
may surmise how He must have dealt with His 
other Apostles. 

And still, as though this was not yet sufficient for 
His heart, Jesus, after he had left them, willed to 
give them another token of His goodness. 

He had called them to a sublime vocation; He 
had admitted them to His most profound fellow- 
ship ; He had endured every thing on their part with- 
out ever altering His love. Through the gift of 
His Spirit He was about to complete and make 
perfect His unspeakable work in these men. But 
for His Divine Heart this was not yet enough. To 
crown it all; to render their life absolutely splendid; 
to carry on their fellowship into a supreme resem- 
blance with Him; to take from their mantle the 
last remnant of human dust; to add another jewel 
to their garland of glory ; to their happiness another 
pledge; to His own tenderness another gift; to 



TO DIE FOR HIM 1 79 

us another proof of His truth, — He gave them 
out of His infinite power and love, what God only 
can offer and can give: He gave them the grace 
to die for Him. 



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